#nyt > top stories

[dostoyevsky-official]

not only did the NYT propagate anti-trans stories feeding today's EO ban and refuse to acknowledge elon's nazi salute, they went vichy-media mode by banning paul krugman from the op-eds:

Last month I retired from my position as an opinion writer at the New York Times—a job I had done for 25 years. Despite the encomiums issued by the Times, it was not a happy departure. [...] I believe that the story of why I left says something important about the current state of legacy journalism.

[...] During my first 24 years at the Times, from 2000 to 2024, I faced very few editorial constraints on how and what I wrote. For most of that period my draft would go straight to a copy editor, who would sometimes suggest that I make some changes — for example, softening an assertion that arguably went beyond provable facts, or redrafting a passage the editor didn’t quite understand, and which readers probably wouldn’t either. But the editing was very light; over the years several copy editors jokingly complained that I wasn’t giving them anything to do, because I came in at length, with clean writing and with back-up for all factual assertions.

This light-touch editing prevailed even when I took positions that made Times leadership very nervous. My early and repeated criticisms of Bush’s push to invade Iraq led to several tense meetings with management. In those meetings, I was urged to tone it down. Yet the columns themselves were published as I wrote them. And in the end, I believe the Times — which eventually apologized for its role in promoting the war — was glad that I had taken an anti-invasion stand. I believe that it was my finest hour.

So I was dismayed to find out this past year, when the current Times editors and I began to discuss our differences, that current management and top editors appear to have been completely unaware of this important bit of the paper’s history and my role in it.

[...] In 2024, the editing of my regular columns went from light touch to extremely intrusive. I went from one level of editing to three, with an immediate editor and his superior both weighing in on the column, and sometimes doing substantial rewrites before it went to copy. These rewrites almost invariably involved toning down, introducing unnecessary qualifiers, and, as I saw it, false equivalence. I would rewrite the rewrites to restore the essence of my original argument. But as I told Charles Kaiser, I began to feel that I was putting more effort—especially emotional energy—into fixing editorial damage than I was into writing the original articles. And the end result of the back and forth often felt flat and colorless.

One more thing: I faced attempts from others to dictate what I could (and could not) write about, usually in the form, “You’ve already written about that,” as if it never takes more than one column to effectively cover a subject. If that had been the rule during my earlier tenure, I never would have been able to press the case for Obamacare, or against Social Security privatization, and—most alarmingly—against the Iraq invasion. Moreover, all Times opinion writers were banned from engaging in any kind of media criticism. Hardly the kind of rule that would allow an opinion writer to state, “we are being lied into war.”

I felt that my byline was being used to create a storyline that was no longer mine. So I left.

That’s my story. What are the broader implications?

[...] What I felt during my final year at the Times was a push toward blandness, toward avoiding saying anything too directly in a way that might get some people (particularly on the right) riled up. I guess my question is, if those are the ground rules, why even bother having an opinion section?

[...] On a somewhat different issue, it became clear to me that the management I was dealing with didn’t understand the difference between having an opinion and having an informed, factually sourced opinion. When the newsletter was canceled, I tried to point out that I was almost the only regular opinion writer doing policy. Their response was to point to other writers who often expressed views about policy, economic and otherwise. I tried in vain to explain that there’s a difference between having opinions about economics and knowing how to read C.B.O. analyses and recent research papers. It all fell on deaf ears.

[eugenedebs1920]

More and more it keeps seeming like the Russia Russia Russia hoax wasn’t a hoax… 🤔

Note: The claim of German intelligence finding Hegseths number on the phones of two spies is disputed. Though this claim can not be verified at this time, what can be verified is the phone used to text top secret war plans on the app signal, unintentionally adding the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldstein in one chat, and another chat which included his wife, brother and lawyer, none of which have security clearance, was easily accessible on numerous sites on the internet. These sites include, WhatsApp, Facebook, Airbnb, and a fantasy sports site, as well as reviews left for a plumbing company and a dentist . (NYT)

With Mike Casey, former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center stating, “There’s zero percent chance that someone hasn’t tried to install Pegasus or some other spyware on his phone. He is one of the top five, probably, most targeted people in the world for espionage,”

Although the claim of the incident between German intelligence and Russian spies cannot be confirmed, the possibility that dozens and dozens of potential foreign actors have access to national intelligence information has.

My intent is never to mislead or spread false information, if in fact the spies story turns out to be such, I do apologize. My intent is to be a purveyor of factuality is a world full of deceptive reporting and rampant misinformation. The purpose of anything is write is to inform readers and point out the incompetence and dangers poised by this administration, or any administration which would threaten or violate the Constitution, to call out hypocrisy and corruption, to sound an alert on attacks against our liberties and freedoms, bring to light policies and actions that jeopardize our democratic principles, that endanger our environment, our health, or our happiness. Occasionally there may be an uplifting or inspiring story too. Not so much of late.

I do not say this with delusions of grandeur as to my impact, reach, importance, or status. I am simply expressing my intentions for sharing, and my apologies for the meme above that cannot be confirmed at the time.

May our nation endure through these dark times

🇺🇸

Eugene

[technofeudalism]

i've got one more wall of text in me for today. i'm sorry, but hopefully this helps more people than it annoys.

i understand the concerns people have about social media being captured to technofascist oligarchs and i share them.

however, and you can call me a boomer for this if you'd like, i am way more worried about the fact that we are watching a scarier replay of the 2016 hyper-normalization of Donald Trump already being carried out in mainstream/establishment news outlets.

Some political operatives on the right, who saw mainstream media coverage of Trump’s first term as overly hostile, say the way the press covered Trump’s first term unwittingly did him a favor.   “I do expect that the media coverage will be a little different in tone,” one national Republican strategist told The Hill this week. “Not because the media is all of a sudden planning on being more objective and less biased, but because they probably finally recognize that their over-the-top hysterical coverage has done nothing but help Trump politically.”  

there are many reason this freaks me out worse, but i can sum up a couple of them.

the rhetoric this time is a magnitude more insane and suddenly alarmingly expansionist. logic would suggest this would justify an even more critical evaluation from the media that they are seemingly neglecting to provide.

the public, thanks to total dereliction of duty by the Democrats, are far more geared up for fascist shit than ever, but are totally ignorant to how this is going to happen (concentration camps)

speaking of the Democratic party: following a series of humiliating, high profile L's, the party finds themselves leaderless and less popular than they've been in 30 years at the worst time. when asked to name the leader of the Democratic Party, 49% of registered voters couldn’t name a person or said “nobody.”

before i continue, i know that there has been a dramatic decrease in people who get their news from traditional media and instead rely on social media, podcasts and the like. that makes sense. people aren't watching cable news anymore, chiefly because fewer and fewer people under the age of 30 even have cable TV and they definitely aren't paying for a New York Times subscription.

but what people fail to consider is that the "news" people consume via social media is often rehashed or half-baked, word of mouth versions of reporting conducted by the mainstream media or the journalists who work for them. there are still journalists working for these publications who take advantage of the increased exposure podcasts provide and go on them to talk about their writing.

people hear the same stories at the end of the day, but the way the issue is initially framed when the story first "breaks" and how it is approached by other outlets who follow up on it is significant. it's a lot less work to have to clean up and suppress news on your platform when the news is already favorable to your cause.

think along the lines of a massive disinformation campaign emerging from one outlet, social media being thrown into a complete frenzy and the only journalist who knows the truth from another outlet hesitating to speak out because of threats from his publisher to keep outrage revenue high or, perhaps more ominously, to directly serve the interest of the fascists in charge.

the US media has always been servile to whims of corporate interests because... well... they are owned by the corporate interests.

but up until today, i was holding out some sliver of hope that even if the NYT, for example, wasn't taking up antifascist actions, they would hold onto a tiny bit of reliability as a further watered down version of itself. an increasingly rare, delicate weapon against misinformation on social media, as opposed to being another tool wielded by fascists on aforementioned social media to grow legitimacy and manufacture consent.

then i saw this. my feeling is now that if the New York Times can't even write a headline - with THAT photograph underneath it - that says in plain English "Elon Musk Makes Nazi Salute Twice at Trump Inauguration," then there is going to be a frightening decrease in quality journalism being funded by mainstream outlets coming.

if you are not sure what to do and you want to be well informed, i have two suggestions. the first and most important, most difficult one that is a skill hard to master, is to develop decent media literacy and an ability to derive context from history.

the second is to build a network of trustworthy local, national and global sources that you can count on. ideally, they would be completely independent and free from editorial oversight or corporate control.

here are some of my recommendations. all of them are flawed. never rely on one source. do not immediately accept something as the truth from any single source. everyone is capable of accidentally getting a detail wrong, or even deliberately misleading.

Dropsite News - ran by Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill

The Intercept - sadly running out of money, alleged CIA ties

Democracy Now! - more center-left, better domestically

Jacobin - wide variety, sometimes shitty takes, Alex Press is great

The Grayzone - this one is controversial (mainly just to liberals) and they make no qualms about being committed to reporting from an anti-imperialist view of the world

Black Agenda Report - perspective from Black leftists. founded by Glen Ford (RIP), a Black Panther and accomplished investigative journalist

Hasan Piker - hate him, love him, neutral, doesn't matter. he's the largest independent political commentator on the left (by far), covering news and misinformation 9 hours a day. you can think he has shit takes, but he's still a reliable source and has been insanely accurate with his opinions

The Majority Report - been around forever, Sam Seder & Emma Vigeland are amazing, once home to the incredible Michael Jamal Brooks (RIP)

Breakthrough News

Labor Notes

Ben Norton @ Global Political Economy

Caitlin Johnstone (AUS)

these are just what i could come up with but there are many more if you do a little bit of digging using these as a baseline. just remember that the source ultimately is irrelevant and will have it's own biases. it is up to you to separate fact and fiction.

[sargeantposting]

A Logan Sargeant Primer: Part I (2000 - 2015)

Logan grows up in a ritzy suburb of Fort Lauderdale called Lighthouse Point with his parents and his older brother, Dalton.

The Sargeants don't have a deep motorsport history. Dalton and Logan get their first go-karts for Christmas in 2006, a gift from their father after their mother refuses to let her children ride dirt bikes anymore. Logan tells the NYT that:

“No one in the family was really even that much into racing. We just picked it up as a hobby, something to do on the weekend.”

The two brothers get more serious as the years go by-- within a few years, they're racing competitively. They both do well. Logan finishes in third place in only his first year of racing, and wins two titles in his second. 

Unfortunately, they figure out fairly quickly that there isn’t much more room to advance in American karting:

My older brother, Dalton, and I had been racing for a few years, and it had gotten to the point where we were asking around about where the next best level of competition was, and everybody was saying the same thing…. It was always Europe, Europe, Europe, Europe. To the point where my parents really started to think about it. At first it was just this idea, like Maybe we’ll move to Europe, who knows. I was just a kid overhearing stuff, so I didn’t know how serious the conversation must have been until this day I’ll never forget.

The conversation gets serious in 2012, when Logan’s dad, Daniel, asks the two if they want to move to Switzerland:

It was summer, and we were out to lunch. It was me, my dad, and Dalton. [...] So we’re at this restaurant, right? Chowing down on burgers (my favorite), and my dad gets to asking us about racing. Finally, he’s like, “What do you guys think? Do you really want to race in Europe? Are you 100% sure about this?” Me being 11 and naive, I was like, “Yeah sure.”  Looking back on it, I think I was lucky I was that young and that I didn’t really know what I was signing up for. All the different ways it could change my life, the level of sacrifice it would require from my whole family. Because if I had known, I don’t know if I would’ve made the same decision so easily. It all happened fast, like in the movies. One minute, it’s Christmas, I’m six, and me and Dalton are yelling at the top of our lungs, excited about the two karts sitting in the driveway, pointed diagonally at each other like in a magazine. Next minute, I’m 11 and Dalton’s 14. We’re sitting at the table eating lunch with my dad, and it’s decided — our family’s moving to Europe.

When Logan tells the same story in GQ in 2023, he says:

I was always just going with the flow. For me it was just: sure.

The Sergeant family leaves for Switzerland just as Logan finishes up fifth grade. While Logan always talks about the family move to Switzerland in the context of his parents making sacrifices for his career, it's a little more complicated than that.

 GQ’s profile steps around the subject, briefly mentioning that “in addition to the racing opportunities, [Logan’s] Dad had business there.” Unfortunately, business would be an understatement. 

At the time, Logan’s dad, Daniel, worked for the family business– an asphalt trading and shipping company named Sergeant Marine. One of the driving forces behind Sergeant Marine’s success would be Daniel’s older brother, Harry. 

When Logan’s detractors mention his family’s connections to Trump, they’re usually referencing Harry. The NYT describes his billionaire uncle as “a former [Top Gun] fighter pilot and onetime finance chair of Florida’s Republican Party who has been sued by the brother-in-law of King Abdullah II of Jordan and whose name turned up, tangentially, in the 2020 impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. (Harry was not accused of any wrongdoing.)” 

Harry would leave the company around the time Daniel moved his family to Switzerland. According to The Florida Phoenix, “The entire family was embroiled in a long-running bitter series of lawsuits that ended with a 2015 bankruptcy settlement. Harry III walked away with a cool $56-million. In return he gave up any claim to ownership of Sargeant Marine and other family companies. There were 14 different lawsuits in several states in addition to the bankruptcy. The lawsuits produced salacious testimony that could only arise in a vicious dispute between millionaires. Harry III accused his brother Daniel of spending millions on his sons’ pursuits of race car driving and other ventures. Meanwhile, Daniel accused Sargeant III of being a spendthrift on things such as a $7.5-million mansion, private jets and exotic cars.”

Logan with his dad.

It would, somehow, get worse:

Oil and asphalt mogul Harry Sargeant III claims that industrial design plans along with recordings of "private consensual relations" were purloined from his private email account and traded off to a corporate intelligence agent as part of a years-long smear campaign against him spearheaded by his brother. Reigniting a long-running saga of brother-against-brother litigation, Harry Sargeant III claims that hundreds of pages of business records, personal discussions and "extremely sensitive videos and photographs" were illegally obtained from his email account. The material was used as currency for information-bartering between his brother Daniel Sargeant and a corporate intelligence chief at the nonparty legal service firm Burford, the lawsuit alleges. Harry is demanding damages for alleged invasion of privacy on the part of Daniel. The brothers had in years past worked together on managing the Sargeant family's global oil and asphalt empire, before intra-family disputes began to tear them apart. [...] The lawsuit claims the Burford investigator, a former corporate attorney, knows Harry well. According to the court documents, the investigator for years worked as an enforcement agent on a $28 million judgment secured against Harry by the king of Jordan's brother-in-law Mohammad Al-Saleh, who accused Harry of cutting him out of a deal to distribute oil to troops in the Iraq War. [...] Harry claims brother Daniel gave the corporate intelligence agent the treasure trove of Harry's emails  in exchange for inside information that would help the Sargeant family's asphalt company Latin American Investments in a separate multimillion-dollar legal dispute. Harry's underlying email account ran on a server of the family company Sargeant Marine. When he was ousted from the Sargeant empire, Harry had been told that the account was cut off at the root and all information in it had been destroyed, the lawsuit says. The lifted emails were instead provided to an "untold number of people" inside and outside of the family businesses in 2016, the lawsuit claims.

The information that Daniel traded his brother’s sex tape for would end up being useless. Daniel is currently out a $5 million bond and awaiting sentencing for the foreign bribery and money laundering charges he pled guilty to back in 2019. After bribing officials in three South American countries to secure asphalt contracts, the Department of Justice ended up making an example of the company– and Daniel– for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. 

While Logan cites his career as a big reason for the family move, it appears that Sargeant Marine had conveniently made shell companies in Switzerland to aid in their illegal business dealings that same year.

Logan, blissfully unaware of any drama, tries to make the most of the big move. They move to Lugano, Switzerland– Dalton and Logan go to the American School on weekdays and race on the weekends in the European junior circuit, bouncing them between Italy, Switzerland and Britain. In GQ, Logan says:

“I definitely felt like school was a lot more challenging than in Florida,” he recalled. “And we were missing a lot of school, for sure, but that’s part of it with racing. It is what it is.”

Logan loves Switzerland. In his Players’ Tribune article, he says:

We moved into a three-bedroom apartment. It was me, my parents, Dalton, and our dog Roxy, the world traveler. Big difference from Florida. We had a whole new life. I loved Switzerland. I had a lot of good friends at my school there. I can’t explain it, but I just felt more a part of things. Me and my friends were big Chelsea fans, and we’d be hanging out, playing soccer all the time. We played Call of Duty like every other kid in the world.

However… Logan is the only one. Daniel is out doing shady asphalt deals around the world and suing his brother. Dalton moves back to Florida after a year-and-a-half. Their mother follows soon after that. Logan ends up living alone at the school: 

Dalton was my older brother, so for as far back as I can remember, I was chasing him. Man, we fought all the time. Every race, we were up against all these other kids, but he was always the one I was really trying to beat. But the thing is, when you’re a kid you miss things. You just can’t see everything so clearly. Like, for instance, being a bit older than me, I think he felt the shift more strongly when we moved, but I didn’t know it. He stayed in Switzerland for a year and a half, did some European karting, and started testing Formula cars. Then one day he just decided he wanted to go home and race in America. I won’t lie, that was a shock at the time. But I get it more now. Making that big life change was hard on my mom, too. Just think, you’re living in this brand new place, don’t have many friends. Me and Dalton were at school all day. My dad was traveling all over the place with work, so he was hardly there. The reality is, she was on her own a lot. So she ended up going back to Florida, too. For about a year and a half after that, it was just me. I was living at the school during that time.

When talking about how his mom moved back to Florida while Logan was living alone in Europe as a teenager, he told the Players’ Tribune that:

Looking back on everything, I just see all the sacrifices they made, and it means so much. No matter what they were going through, my family always pushed me to keep going. I feel like that was probably the hardest for my mom, especially. She means the world to me. She’s a bit of a worrier too, and overthinks. I think I get that from her. She’s always been the person I could go to when I was doubting myself. So I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for her to encourage me to keep going, when I know she probably wanted our family to be together. I’m really grateful, not only that they believed in me that much, to move our entire family, but that they took my passion for driving seriously enough not to let me give it all up.

While Logan’s personal life may be troubled, his karting career is doing exceptionally well. In 2014, he wins the prestigious SuperNats18 in Vegas:

Infinity Sports Management, Facebook - SARGEANT DOMINATES IN LAS VEGAS. Logan Sargeant produced a stunning display last weekend in the TAG Junior category at the Supernationals race in Las Vegas. After finishing runner up in the race in 2013 Logan was eager to go one better this year and bring home the winners trophy. Although Logan got pipped in qualifying he still managed to win every heat ensuring he would start from pole position for the final on Sunday. From there he kept the lead and came home 5.6 seconds clear of the second driver. With this win in TAG Junior Logan become the first driver ever to win the TAG Cadet and TAG Junior categories at the Supernationals race.

2015 manages to be even more exceptional. Logan starts the season by being the first North American driver to win a WSK event by winning the WSK Champions Cup in La Conca, Italy.

Logan with his mother after winning the WSK Champions Cup.

The season reaches its peak with Logan becomes the first American to win an FIA Karting World Championship, the top junior series, since Lake Speed in 1978.

He gets to go to the FIA Awards:

Logan: And I couldn’t thank my mechanic enough. And also my parents, uh, they really helped me to be able to win the world championship and it’s just an amazing feeling. Interviewer: I mean, did you, did you, what did you do when you found out you won? Did you call your friends at home? Did you phone your grandpa? What did you get up to? Logan: Uh, no, I just gave my mom and dad a really big hug. Interviewer: Is it still sinking in now? Logan: Yeah, it’s, it’s a really emotional thing. [...] Interviewer: Tell me about when you were a little bit younger than you are now. You’re only 14 now. But why racing, why, why is this so important to you? Logan: Um, well, my dad bought me a, a racing kart when I was five years old and we started from there. We thought it would just be like a little hobby and, uh, it ended up becoming like a professional thing we did. So. Interviewer: So, so was there a moment when you, when you or your dad just thought ‘Wow, I’m quick. I can do this’? Logan: Um, well, not really. We just kept progressing and then, um, when we, when we decided to come to Europe to race, um, we moved to Switzerland and from then on we were just, uh, going to school, I started going to school in Switzerland. And, yeah, and then we just kept going and then ended up like this. Interviewer: Do you have any other hobbies? Can you fit anything else in? Logan: Um, well, other than school it’s really hard. But when I get my breaks and I go back to Florida for, um, I like to go fishing a lot and, yeah, that’s what I do. Mostly. 

When interviewed after his win, Logan tells kart360 that:

Moving away from home is a very hard thing in your own personal life. You lose all of your best friends. You don’t have your "home" and you have to adapt to a different culture. It is hard to move to a country that speaks a different language than what you know, but racing is so important to me that I stuck through it and kept on going.

Logan clearly struggles on a personal level. He discusses his feelings in his Players’ Tribune article, saying: 

Coming up racing as a kid isn’t easy. That’s the most honest way I can put it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to myself, I’m done. I’m ready to come home. I’m glad I didn’t, but there were plenty of times when I wanted to. I remember one big time was the summer right after Dalton went back. We took this trip to the Bahamas with some of our extended family and friends. We were on the water, and everything was feeling like old times. And I think I just had this pit in the bottom of my stomach, like dreading going back. There was a night when I went to my mom, and I was like, “I’m just ready to come home.” I remember her asking me more questions about what I was feeling. I don’t even remember what I said, to be honest. I just remember that she didn’t tell me what to do. She left it completely up to me. My dad used to always say, “If you put in the work now, it’ll pay off eventually — it’ll be worth it.” And he kind of reminded me of that on that trip too. It’ll be worth it. Those four little words … that’s what kept me going. After that I sucked it up, went back to Switzerland, put my head down, and I went for it."

When Logan makes the jump to single seaters the next year, his parents rent him an apartment to live in by himself in London. The only time he’ll spend more than a few weeks in the US since he was a 12-year old would be during COVID.

But Logan’s time in single seaters will be for the next installment.

Logan through the years.

[books]

Writer Spotlight: Jamie Beck

Jamie Beck is a photographer residing in Provence, France. Her Tumblr blog, From Me To You, became immensely successful shortly after launching in 2009. Soon after, Jamie, along with her partner Kevin Burg, pioneered the use of Cinemagraphs in creative storytelling for brands. Since then, she has produced marketing and advertising campaigns for companies like Google, Samsung, Netflix, Disney, Microsoft, Nike, Volvo, and MTV, and was included in Adweek Magazine’s “Creative 100” among the industry’s top Visual Artists. In 2022, she released her first book, An American in Provence, which became a NYT Bestseller and Amazon #1 book in multiple categories, and featured in publications such as Vogue, goop, Who What Wear, and Forbes. Flowers of Provence is Jamie’s second book.

Can you tell us about how The Flowers of Provence came to be?

I refer to Provence often as ‘The Garden of Eden’ for her harmonious seasons that bring an ever-changing floral bounty through the landscape. My greatest joy in life is telling her story of flowers through photography so that we may all enjoy them, their beauty, their symbolism, and their contribution to the harmony of this land just a bit longer. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

How do your photography and writing work together? Do you write as part of your practice?

I constantly write small notations, which usually occur when I am alone in nature with the intention of creating a photograph or in my studio working alone on a still life. I write as I think in my head, so I have made it a very strict practice that when a thought or idea comes up, I stop and quickly write the text in the notes app on my phone or in a pocket journal I keep with me most of the time. If I don’t stop and write it down at that moment, I find it is gone forever. It is also the same practice for shooting flowers, especially in a place as seasonal as Provence. If I see something, I must capture it right away because it could be gone tomorrow. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

You got your start in commercial photography. What’s something you learned in those fields that has served you well in your current creative direction?

I think my understanding of bridging art and commerce came from my commercial photography background. I can make beautiful photographs of flowers all day long, but how to make a living off your art is a completely different skill that I am fortunate enough to have learned by working with so many different creative brands and products in the past. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

Do you remember your first photograph?

Absolutely! I was 13 years old. My mother gave me her old Pentax 35mm film camera to play with. When I looked through the viewfinder, it was as if the imaginary world in my head could finally come to life! I gave my best friend a makeover, put her in an evening gown in the backyard of my parents’ house in Texas, and made my first photograph, which I thought was so glamorous! So Vogue!

You situate your photographic work with an introduction that charts the seasons in Provence through flowers. Are there any authors from the fields of nature writing and writing place that inspire you?

I absolutely adore Monty Don! His writing, his shoes, and his ease with nature and flowers—that’s a world in which I want to live. I also love Floret Flowers, especially on social media, as a way to learn the science behind flowers and how to grow them. 

How did you decide on the order of the images within The Flowers of Provence?

Something I didn’t anticipate with a book deal is that I would actually be the one doing the layouts! I assumed I would hand over a folder of images, and an art director would decide the order. At first, it was overwhelming to sort through it all because the work is so personal, and I’m so visual. But in the end, it had to be me. It had to be my story and flow to be truly authentic. I tried to move through the seasons and colors of the landscape in a harmonious way that felt a bit magical, just as discovering Provence has felt to me. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

How do you practice self-care when juggling work and life commitments alongside the creative process?

The creative process is typically a result that comes out of taking time for self-care. I get some of my best ideas for photographic projects or writing when I am in a bath or shower or go for a long (and restorative) walk in nature. Doing things for myself, such as how I dress or do my hair and makeup, is another form of creative expression that is satisfying. 

What’s a place or motif you’d like to photograph that you haven’t had a chance to yet?

I am really interested in discovering more formal gardens in France. I like the idea of garden portraiture, trying to really capture the essence and spirit of places where man and nature intertwine. 

Which artists do you return to for inspiration?

I’m absolutely obsessed with Édouard Manet—his color pallet and subject matter. 

What are three things you can’t live without as an artist?

My camera, the French light, and flowers, of course. 

What’s your favorite flower to photograph, and why?

I love roses. They remind me of my grandmother, who always grew roses and was my first teacher of nature. The perfume of roses and the vast variety of colors, names, and styles all make me totally crazy. I just love them. They simply bring me joy the same way seeing a rainbow in the sky does. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

[qqueenofhades]

AAAAHHHHHHHH It's TIM! 1000% strong MN girl here and boy it's been real fun to watch Tim (and Peggy! Our amazing lieutenant governor) take a small small Democratic majority and do incredible things. My kid ate two meals at school every day for free. DELIGHTED that he's the VP pick. LET'S GOOOOOOOO!!!!

Listen, I am just ECSTATIC. Ever since I seriously became tuned into the veepstakes, he was my number one pick (I mean, I was not immune to the brief flirtation everyone had with Beshear/Buttigieg/etc), but yes. Walz was my top pick and I was trying desperately not to get my heart too set on him in case it fell through, but he was the obvious best choice of the contenders by a country mile. He has an almost absurdly Midwestern pro-America background (military veteran, public school teacher, football coach from a small rural town, etc) AND he has managed to enact a long list of progressive policies in Minnesota with a very narrow majority in the state legislature. Also, you're going to be seeing a lot of this video, for good reason:

Also.... let's be real, Shapiro would have been an incredible distraction/drag on the ticket, unfortunately. We don't need to deal with his retrograde views on Gaza and his other baggage, and while he is a very popular governor in Pennsylvania, it's less certain that his appeal would translate to other states. We can argue (or you know, let's not and move on) about whether or not that was fair, but this is just not the year to try to win the most critical high-stakes election ever by pissing off young voters. Shapiro has done plenty of good things and has time to develop his career further, but he would have been a BAD pick for 2024 and I was alarmed at how many Respected Pundits (tm) were pulling for him. Reuters even claimed that picking him would "defang Republican attempts to make Israel-Gaza a wedge issue for Democrats," which is such a mind-bogglingly stupid statement that it makes you wonder how anyone writing it actually got paid for their political insight, but it also explains a lot about mainstream media these days. Picking Shapiro would have been an absolute gift to the Republicans and bad-faith actors and others (plus like, I don't want to have to spend time winning back the young voters who are actually once more engaged in the process!) and would have led to the media eagerly jumping into the feeding frenzy (because they're desperate to have a reason not to cover Trump's increasingly crazy-ass shit) and other Democratic-on-Democratic infighting. And it goes without saying that WE CANNOT AFFORD THAT.

As well, picking Shapiro just because you need to win PA this election cycle is yet another example of why the Electoral College sucks, and the polling averages in PA have been moving solidly blue anyway. You can just park Shapiro there and have him campaign in the state as the sitting popular governor, rather than expose him to the liability of a nationwide campaign where, as noted, all the other stuff would be a drag. If it's true that the establishment was pushing Harris to pick Shapiro and she picked Walz instead, a) GOOD! and b) if anything, this election cycle needs to fucking teach us that we have got to stop going with the Conventional Wisdom Tee Em. Walz was already out there, he was already popular with the public/energizing the grassroots, AND he was the guy who coined the "Weird" attack line that is actually effective and organically popular against the Republicans and drives them batshit. So for Kamala to lean into that and take him as her running mate is... zomgz... smart, and I am not used to the Democrats playing smart and aggressive and not just passive-defensive. I don't understand. Wow.

Anyway, now watch the New York Times (and the others, lbr, but especially the NYT) desperately try to dig up scandalous stories about that time Walz didn't stop at the 4H booth at the county fair, or walked past someone without saying "Ope just gonna sneak by ya first" or some other terrible Midwestern sin, but fuck those guys. I am EXCITED I am ENERGIZED I am THRILLED. This is a GREAT new ticket that came together at incredibly short notice and completely changed the dynamics everywhere, Walz is gonna make JD Vance cry (unsure whether I want to see Harris demolish Trumpster or Midwestern Dad to turn the cranks on Weird Couchfucking Fascist Skidmark more, but both, both, both is good). LET'S GO GET THOSE WEIRD MOTHERFUCKERS, Y'ALL!!

HARRIS/WALZ 2024!

[longreads]

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

In this week's Top 5:

* Dying to seek asylum in Canada (The Local) * The rise of UFC  (Rolling Stone) * Hoarding at the British Museum (The Guardian) * A mystery at Lake Tahoe (Bay Nature) * Dog dialogue (NYT Mag)

Learn why our editors are recommending these stories.

[bowlofmie]

some of my favorite DS games I never see people talk about (as a DS owner of 15 years) :

Petz Rescue Endangered Paradise

this is a random one, but it's genuinely really good. the characters have a lot of depth and are interesting. the characters design is really nice and I love the colors. teaches a lot about environmentalism and has an interesting story that plays with modern science and indigenous land. worth a play!

Tetris ds

such a cool version of tetris! i love all the extra modes and the classic NES Nintendo theme! lots of fun, and up there as one of my favorite versions of Tetris, and that's saying something.

Peggle ds

oh yeah. I had a peggle moment. that lasted a hot minute. thanks Doug Doug. I literally couldn't sleep because I was thinking about this game. and I really like this version of it! there's an extra kind of peg that isn't in the regular version and I think it's a nice addition, and it's every bit as satisfying but completely portable! not to mention it comes with both peggle and peggle nights!

Diddy Kong Racing ds

I have extremely vivid memories of playing this until my ds lite died, charging it, and then playing it again. i love that you can explore an open world in this game. it's the main thing that kept me coming back, but the racing is also lots of fun and the graphics feel so nostalgic and fun. I may have even played this solo more than Mario kart DS.

Mario Party ds

when I think of Mario party, this is what I think of. being able to play with one cartridge and 4 people anywhere is absolutely unmatched. and if you're alone, the solo play and puzzle games are really fun on their own! i still play this game with my little sisters regularly, and it was a classic in my childhood friend group. probably the most popular game on this list, but I wanted to mention it.

NYT Crosswords

such a cool game! the graphics are really well done and so are the sound effects. I love that there's a multiplayer option so you can solve a puzzle with a friend. I used to play it with my partner and it was lots of fun. the puzzles are a lot more difficult than modern day nyt crosswords, but they have a hint option if needed.

Bejeweled Twist

I got this game at a GameStop for like 5 bucks when I was a kid and I was genuinely hooked. I played it constantly. there's more to it than regular bejeweled so it kept my attention, but there's also lots of levels and puzzles

Art Academy

as an art student, I have to say that this game and it's sequels on the 3ds can function as essentially a semester or so of art school. they teach a lot of the basics in a really approachable way, and I learned a lot from them. also a big fan of how they replicated traditional media digitally. super charming and cute recurring characters, like Bacon the dog, make it feel more grounded. the lessons are really good, but it also just feels nice to doodle.

Gardening Mama

this was my favorite of the ___ing mama games when I was younger. I actually learned a lot about real gardening that ended up being helpful irl. it's a simple game, but being able to make your own garden and harvest from it is such a fun extra feature.

Retro Game Challenge

you get sent back in time and have to beat classic video games to get back. so much personality. it had me actually laughing at some points. the graphics are so classically DS and I love them. lots of fun!

G. G Series Wonderland

an Alice in wonderland themed top down shooter? uh yeah?? really fun and fast paced! i like to play this one mindlessly.

G. G Series Hero Puzzle

really cool! almost a tetris rogue-lite? there's combat and upgrades and weapons and its really fun!

GO Series Bass Fishing and Fishing Resort

my favorite fishing game!! so much personality! so many cute little mechanics and the characters are so cute! begging on my hands and knees for more people to play this game!!

Picross 3D

thank you to Best Buy for having this game on a tester DS back in the day. i love love love this one. the graphics are classic DS, and look so clean and fun. the puzzles themselves are so well designed, and I love the sound track. i have so many hours in this game it's maybe embarrassing. gotta say I was a little let down by the sequel because there was so much less personality, but it was still fun.

Over the Hedge: Hammy Goes Nuts

got this game with my original ds lite when I was around 8. I was so obsessed with it lol. there's a lot to do, and I always felt like I was exploring a big world. (not to be confused with the game of the same name on the GBA. for some reason that one is a golf game?)

DK Jungle Climber

genuinely very confused that I've never seen anyone talk about this one. it's a lot of fun and it was one of my favorites as a kid (my L button was broken though so it was a bit rough to play at the time lol) lots of personality, satisfying gameplay, and lots of fun levels to play!

Alice in Wonderland

reminds me a bit of a Metroidvania. cute characters and interesting dialogue. lots of interesting mechanics and fun to explore.

Wario Master of Disguise

i love the wario land games and this one is a fun one I never see lumped with the rest of them. there are some touch based micro games but I think they're fun and as is the case with every wario game, great level design and so much personality.

Sims 2 Castaway

try to pry this game out of my dead hands. try. i love this game. i have so many hours in it. lots of depth and fun things to do! the PSP version is also lots of fun!

Sudoku Ball

this is a funky one. solve sudoku puzzles that are in a big ball and also solve mysteries at the same time. a little bit layton-esque? also reminds me of detective Conan for some reason.

Tinker Bell

almost reminds me of animal crossing or stardew with lots of little mini games. one of my childhood faves.

Pac Pix

another childhood fave. you draw pacmen (? pacmans?) and catch ghosts. cool graphics and fun gameplay.

SEGA Super Stars Tennis

my favorite tennis game! so fun! the graphics are really cool, love all the character options, and the gameplay is so fun.

Tamagotchi Connection Corner Shop 3

build up little shops in a tamagotchi town! my mom used to get so mad because I used to play this game at full volume because I loved the sound effects lol. i particularly love the archeology game and the piano game, but they're all lots of fun.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Worried About Traction/Why Write?

Anonymous asked: Okay answer me this, so I've read how trad publishing is going to shit, but self-publishing I doubt I could gain any traction with. Then why fucking write, ya know? People say, "write for yourself," which sounds like a lot of goody bullshit. I want people to love my writing, I need some type of validation. So, how the hell do I get anyone to care about my stories?

Just a quick note that this ask came in off Anon, and I wasn't sure if it was meant to, so I put I'm posting it Anon to be on the safe side.

So, I don't want to get too much into the "is traditional publishing dying" debacle, because it's a conversation that's complex and nuanced and outside of my energy reserves at the moment. What I will say is that the traditional publishers--the Big Five in particular--still dominate the market, especially where print books are concerned. And although self-publishing can respond more quickly to trends and shifting tastes, traditional publishing continues to evolve.

Having said that, even if traditional publishing was stronger than ever before, that wouldn't guarantee you a book deal. Even in the best of times, the odds of being traditionally published are between 1 and 2%. Even if you get a book deal, that doesn't guarantee your book will be a best-seller. Hundreds of thousands of books are traditionally published every year, and far fewer than 1% of those books will become best sellers. Being traditionally published doesn't even guarantee your book will be sold in brick and mortar bookstores. I can point you toward traditionally published books that have been out almost a year and still have fewer than 10 reviews on Amazon. I can point you toward many more with fewer than 30.

And, while we're on the subject, I can show you self-published books with thousands of reviews (positive ones, btw...)

The point is, it doesn't really matter how you publish. What you write, how you write, and how you market is far, far more important. But the reality is, most of us aren't writing the kinds of books that are going to be best-sellers, BookTok sensations, Oprah's Book Club selections, or get optioned for film rights before the ink on the book deal is even dry. So, when you say you need validation, what does that look like for you? Does it mean seeing your name at the top of the NYT best seller list for five weeks straight? Seeing your book on eye-level shelves at an international airport? Hundreds of fans showing up to your book signing? A-hundred thousand followers on Twitter eagerly awaiting news of your next release? Or, does it look like someone... anyone... enjoying your book enough to leave a 5-star review... someone calling you their favorite writer, several fans re-posting your cover reveal because they're so excited for your upcoming book, or someone writing to say your book got them through a difficult time in their lives? Because, while I would never tell you not to dare to dream of achieving the former list of expectations, I will absolutely tell you the latter list of expectations is well within your grasp. So, if that's validation enough for you, write for those people. If it isn't, and it's not enough to write for yourself, then I think all you can do is try. Write the best stories you can write. Get them out there. Promote the hell out of them and see what happens. Maybe you will be one of those lucky few who see their book at the top of the NYT best seller list for five weeks in a row. Or, maybe you won't, but you get a two-page e-mail from a fan who says your story changed their life. And maybe, after all, that's enough. Here are some posts that can help you start building a following ahead of publishing, whatever route you end up choosing. Building a buzz on social media ahead of publishing and consistent promotion afterward can make a big difference. Even if you publish traditionally. Guide: Getting Your Writing Noticed on Tumblr Guide: Author Platforms-What, Why, and How? Guide: How to Promote Yourself as a Writer/Author via Social Media 12 Sites for Sharing Original Fiction

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[girlactionfigure]

Here's a story for you about how the news industry works.

Earlier tonight, the group that invaded Israel, massacred 1000+ people, burned families to death in their homes, took hostages back to Gaza, and recorded it all with GoPros – this group announced that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds.

Then, instead of waiting for more information from the Israeli side, the editors of the world's most important media outlets said to themselves: "This is enough for us. Let's run with it."

Headlines screamed that Israel bombed a hospital. Push notifications were sent to MILLIONS of people.

CNN push: "Hundreds of people may have been killed in an Israeli strike on a Gaza City hospital, according to the Palestinian health ministry"

BBC push: "Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli air strike on hospital in Gaza, Palestinian officials say"

NYT push: "At least 500 people were killed by an Israeli airstrike at a Gaza hospital, the Palestinian Health Ministry said"

Do you see what they did there?

They put the dramatic news in the beginning of the sentence and then they cited the source at the end so that the assertion is technically true. The Palestinian Health Ministry DID say that.

The thing is, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza is a Hamas institution.

What do you call people who amplify Hamas propaganda not just as news, but as the top news story in the world?

There is no way that a professional military such as the Israel Defense Forces can give an instant answer about a catastrophe in enemy territory during a war. It took around two or three hours for the IDF to share the results of its initial investigation – that the explosion at the hospital was a due to a rocket launched by Islamic Jihad that malfunctioned and crashed back into Gaza. More evidence is coming out as I write this.

The sad fact is that it appears that hundreds of Palestinians are dead at a hospital because terrorists in Gaza tried to fire rockets at Israelis and ended up hitting their own people. It's unbearably stupid and tragic.

None of this is new, unfortunately. Journalists in the Middle East know – they absolutely know – that a significant percentage of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s rockets misfire and crash into residential areas of Gaza. 

I've attached a famous example. This video is from May 2022. It shows a live broadcast of a rocket being launched from a residential area of Gaza. The rocket malfunctions, turns sideways, and crashes into the city. The overexcited broadcaster tries to pretend that nothing unusual happened and asks the camera man to turn away. The video went viral at the time. There are other known instances where this happened. 

These rockets are designed to kill people. Don't act surprised when they do.

I say all of this to remind you to treat breaking news from Gaza with caution, even if it's unpopular to do so.

Daniel Rubenstein

[spockwithacat]

I don’t like the NYT but this article is genuinely insane https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/world/middleeast/iran-israel-strikes-nuclear-talks.html?smid=url-share

What do you mean they didn’t think Israel was going to strike and it was just Israel propaganda. What do you mean they ignored warning and a bunch of the top level people gathered in one room. Like legitimately WHAT???? There was a lot of confusion of how Israel took so many top level people when they had ample time in advanced to prepare and speculation that Mossad must have been so good they knew all the bunker hiding spots they were going to but apparently they went home normally and all gathered in one place. Also apparently all of the imbecile geopolitical Twitter commenters were apparently less surprise by the strike times than them. Part of me feels like this has to be wrong, there’s got to be more to the story than this because it’s insanely stupid but apparently that’s what they are reporting. All I can really think is WHAT?????

[wondrluv]

༺ CLARA AND THE BOYS

༺ HOW THEY GET TOGETHER

➪ they met in the fall of 2023

➪ she’s out buying some new things for her classroom (she’s currently teaching at this time, her second year)

➪ the boys all live together and they always go grocery shopping together so that’s where they are

➪ she’s reaching for, attempting to reach for, a binder that’s shoved to the back of the top shelf, but she is a short girly so she can’t reach it

➪ she ends up shyly asking them who happen to be walking past, juraj and cole goofing around as she approaches

➪ cole tries to grab it at first, but ultimately it ends up being arber who grabs it for her

➪ she’s wearing her dad’s old canadiens sweatshirt which is where he grew up actually

➪ this leads to the three of them asking questions and her having to explain how she doesn’t know anything about hockey much less sports in general

➪ they don’t see each other again until 2 weeks later when they’re grocery shopping after a long roadie and she’s replenishing her tea stock

➪ this time they exchange their numbers and form their group chat

➪ the boys end up convincing her to come to a game and she’s nervous about going by herself but she does and they even get her to come down to the tunnel afterward to see them

➪ they are all practically infatuated with her, always flirting and teasing her about random things, even if it’s small

➪ it’s not until december of 2024 when all of their feelings for each other become prominent, or more prominent

➪ it’s the boys at first who confess to each other and then they all go talk to clara

➪ she’s nervous, her feelings are just as strong if not stronger than the boys’ but she doesn’t want to come between them if anything happens

➪ it takes a lot of talking before she finally agrees, not because she’s pressured but because she feels comfortable about it

➪ they take it slow for her sake, but they’re all very much in love with each other which is hard to deny

༺ THEIR RELATIONSHIP

➪ they love spending time together, no matter what they’re doing

➪ they could all being doing their own things but if they’re together it makes it better

➪ they’re always coming up with random reasons to pick her up from school or bring her lunch

➪ they tease her all the time about the tiniest things, they live for the moments she turns all red and shies behind one of the other boys

➪ their favorite thing to do all together is cuddle

➪ it’s usually after a long night or a long roadie and they’re all on the couch or the bed, tangled limbs and quiet talks about their days and such

➪ they love to hear her read, a lot of the time when they’re just lounging around they’ll ask her too read out loud

➪ they all have their different ways of comforting clara (detailed in their sections)

➪ she’ll share funny stories of kids from school, usually consisting of things they asked her or things they’ve told her

➪ they are clara’s personal hype boys, always complimenting her 

➪ she loves going to the beach so a lot of the time the three of them will take her there

➪ clara’s love language is gift giving and quality time

༺ COLE AND CLARA

➪ cole’s nicknames for clara: clary, cc, baby

➪ clara’s nicknames for cole: cc, honey, baby

➪ cole’s love language is quality time/words of affirmation

➪ clara goes to cole for comfort when she needs peace and quiet

➪ cole is the perfect balance of bringing out her chaotic side and also being that person to just let her be (aka the perfect mix of juraj and arber)

➪ their favorite thing to do together is do the nyt games in the morning

➪ no matter where they are or what time it is, their talking or texting/calling each other to do them

➪ besides that, sometimes at night they’ll cuddle in bed and do a sudoku puzzle

➪ they do some crafts together, sometimes on the beach

➪ her favorite one they’ve done is simply painting their hands and placing them on the canvas

➪ they’ve done a lot of tiktok trends together that just sit in their drafts

༺ ARBER AND CLARA

➪ arber’s nicknames for clara: clary, sweetheart

➪ clara’s nicknames for arber: arbs, honey, sweetheart

➪ arber’s love language is physical affection

➪ clara goes to arber for comfort when she needs a bone-crushing, protective hug

➪ it’s not like cole and juraj don’t give bone-crushing, protective hugs but there’s something about the way arber does it that makes all of her worries fade away and she feels safe

➪ arber is the most protective of her

➪ he always has a jacket on hand for her, one that sits in the back of his car

➪ he’s always wrapping his arm around her waist when they go on walks around town

➪ loves to give her hugs and press kisses on her temple

➪ they play chopsticks all the time together

➪ arber makes her dinner constantly and she loves when he does it

➪ when there’s a night just the two of them, she reads to him and plays with his hair

➪ he’s always covering the edges of counters or cabinets when she goes to grab something because he knows she’s somewhat accident-prone

➪ their favorite thing to do together is just hug

➪ no matter what’re feeling, it’s just the perfect thing to display that

༺ JURAJ AND CLARA

➪ juraj’s nicknames for clara: clary, darling

➪ clara’s nicknames for juraj: j, honey, darling

➪ juraj’s love language is quality time

➪ clara goes to juraj for comfort when she needs an escape

➪ juraj is always doing random things with her, laser tag, the arcade, runs, etc. so when she doesn’t want to think about it, she goes to juraj

➪ they’re always going on random adventures around town

➪ he definitely brings her out of her comfort zone 

➪ their favorite thing to do together is to go on runs

➪ she’ll listen to her music and he’ll listen to his and they’ll just run

➪ there are sometimes she zones out when running and he’ll have to snap her out of it but it rarely happens

➪ juraj is her laughter person, if she needs to laugh she’ll go to him

➪ he is protective, not at the level of arber, but hands down he is a protective boyfriend

➪ overall they just love doing things together, if she’s too shy to go somewhere and needs someone outgoing, she’s asking juraj

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

M. Wuerker: Politico

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 21, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 22, 2025

These days, I keep coming back to the quotation recorded by journalist Ron Suskind in a New York Times Magazine article in 2004. A senior advisor to President George W. Bush told Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community”: they believed people could find solutions based on their observations and careful study of discernible reality. But, the aide continued, such a worldview was obsolete. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore…. We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

In 2004 that quotation seemed a reflection on how members of an administration hoped to shape the globe and public perceptions of their actions. Twenty-one years later, it seems we are seeing what happens when members of an administration believe they can shape not just perceptions but reality itself, and discover that reality is stubborn.

After news broke last night that the Pentagon was preparing a top-secret presentation for billionaire Elon Musk on plans for fighting a potential war with China, members of the administration denied that Musk’s visit to the Pentagon would include such a meeting. This morning, Musk posted on social media that the “leakers” “will be found.” “I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT,” he posted.

Aside from appearing to confirm the story—one can’t “leak” a false story—Sophia Cai, Danny Nguyen, Daniel Payne, Amy MacKinnon, and Eli Stokols of Politico suggest that Musk’s threat has backfired. “We are public servants, not Elon’s servants,” one Food and Drug Administration employee told the reporters, adding, “[t]he public deserves to know how dysfunctional, destructive, and deceptive all of this has been and continues to be.”

A senior Federal Aviation Administration official said, referring to Musk, “He IS A LEAKER. When you put hard drives on data systems at government agencies you are creating the biggest security breaches we have seen in years and years. Possibly ever.” A Department of Agriculture staffer said: “If the Biden administration or Obama had acted like this, no one would have tolerated it. The Trump administration doesn’t get a pass.”

Those angry at Musk and the cuts his Department of Government Efficiency team has made to the government have demonstrated their anger by launching a grassroots movement called “TeslaTakedown” that protests peacefully at Tesla dealerships. Law enforcement officers and experts in domestic extremism say they have found no evidence that acts of vandalism against cars, charging stations, and dealerships—there have been at least ten such instances—are coordinated.

Trump tried to shore up the brand with a sales pitch for Teslas at the White House on March 11, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Wednesday urged the Fox News Channel audience to buy Tesla stock, an endorsement that violated federal ethics rules but did nothing to prop up the stock price.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi called vandalism of Teslas “domestic terrorism,” and today President Donald Trump insisted that the vandalism of Tesla products is far more serious than the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol when rioters tried to stop the counting of electoral votes and thus overturn the will of American voters. Trump issued a blanket pardon for those rioters, including those convicted of violence against law enforcement officers, but today he posted about Tesla vandals on social media: “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

At the Social Security Administration, acting commissioner Leland Dudek is threatening to shut down the agency in response to the temporary restraining order issued yesterday by U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander. In that order, Hollander noted that the “Department of Government Efficiency” was “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” and “never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems.”

She prohibited Social Security officials from sharing with DOGE any personally identifiable information (PII) that would make it possible to identify specific individuals. Dudek suggested that Hollander’s order could apply to all SSA employees because the administration has ordered them to cooperate with DOGE. “Everything in this agency is PII,” he said. “Unless I get a clarification, I’ll just start to shut it down. I don’t have much of a choice here.”

Dudek was a mid-level staffer at SSA until he won his position atop the agency by secretly cooperating with DOGE’s demands to review sensitive records after SSA’s head, Michelle King, stood in the way. “I confess. I bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

SSA oversees Social Security benefits for nearly 70 million people and, according to the agency, was expected to distribute about $1.6 trillion in benefits in 2025. For many people, that check is vital to survival. But billionaire Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick suggested that concerns about a stoppage in checks were overblown. He told billionaire podcast host Chamath Palihapitiya: “Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling, and complaining.”

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, disagreed: “For almost 90 years, Social Security has never missed a paycheck—but 60 days into this administration, Social Security is now on the brink…. Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has proven again that he is in way over his head, compromising the privacy of millions of Americans, shutting down services that senior citizens rely on and planning debilitating layoffs, all in service to Elon Musk’s lies.”

Hollander responded to Dudek’s threat by calling his interpretation of the order “inaccurate” and specifying that SSA employees who are not members of DOGE or working on DOGE’s agenda are not subject to the order. “Moreover, any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect.” After Dudek continued to insist that SSA employees and DOGE are intertwined, Hollander issued another clarification tonight, saying that if that is the case, she “was misled by counsel for the government,” who said that just ten people at SSA are working for DOGE.

“More to the point,” she added, “in my earlier letter today…I directed the government to contact [the Court] immediately if there is any need for clarification of the [order]. As I write this letter, it is well after 6:00 p.m. and the government has yet to contact the Court.”

Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post observed today that “the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ [is making] the federal government almost comically inefficient.” She wrote that Internal Revenue Service employees line up at shared computers on Mondays to submit their “five things I did last week” emails to DOGE while taxpayer service calls go unanswered. Federal surveyors at the Bureau of Land Management are no longer allowed to buy replacement equipment, so when a shovel breaks they can’t simply replace it; they have to locate a manager authorized to file an official procurement form and order one. Many have had to ignore their actual jobs in order to scrub words from official documents.

After interviewing frustrated civil servants for weeks, Rampell said, she has learned that “routine tasks take longer to complete, grinding down worker productivity,” while DOGE bogs workers down with “meaningless busywork, which sets them up to be punished for neglecting their actual duties.”

“All this talk of warfighter ethos, and our ‘priority’ is making sure there are no three-year-old tweets with the word ‘diversity’ in them,” one Pentagon staffer told Rampell. “Crazy town.”

Administration officials are discovering that their idea of slashing through government might not have adequately considered how actual people might react to that destruction. As constituents erupt with anger, Republican lawmakers are refusing to hold town hall meetings. Yesterday, Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) responded to boos and heckling by saying: “It’s so bizarre to me how obsessed you are with federal government…. [Y]our hysteria is just really over the top.” When protesters dressed as chickens to goad Representative James Comer (R-KY) into holding a town hall, he issued a statement: “Congressman Comer does not plan on holding therapy sessions for left-wing activists suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

In place of Republican town halls, Democrats are holding their own packed events in Republican districts. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour across the country because, as Sanders says, people are “profoundly disgusted with what is going on here in Washington, D.C.”

Today, 11,000 people turned out to hear Sanders and AOC in Republican-led Greeley, Colorado. Another 34,000 turned out in Denver.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[genericpuff]

I WANNA TALK ABOUT THE FUCKING EISNERS-

i've been finding lately that there are so many topics i still wanna talk about concerning LO and its development and they just don't happen because i get distracted or busy and my brain is like "ok we're just gonna pretend we've already talked about it even though we haven't" JFKDLSAJFDASKLFJSLKA

Let's talk about the Eisners and LO's recent 'win'.

I've already briefly mentioned in previous posts that LO has had a lot of its awards and accolades bought for it. This is especially true for both the NYT Bestseller label (seriously, none of those labels are ever earned, it's not some top 100 list that you compete on, it goes to whoever is willing to pay for it or whoever an editorial column wants to highlight) and, of course, the Eisner Award, which is not exactly an award judged by the industry's finest (the judges this year were made up of largely comic book shop owners and librarians).

But we're not here to talk about that. I wanna talk about what happened after LO won its second Eisner.

First off, the fact that it can be nominated at all when it doesn't even really fit the criteria for their submissions is sketchy at best:

see: "new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2022." LO is not 'new'. Sure, it has new episodes, but I don't think that really follows the spirit of what they meant by 'new'. The Eisner doesn't seem like an award that should be granted to the same series twice, is my point, and that's one of the many complaints brought up in the absolute dressing down that LO got in its announcement post on the Webtoons Official IG page.

Of course, you can see for yourself right here.

But for the sake of fun, let's share some of the excerpts here.

(and yes I'm sharing a LOT of these because frankly I don't trust WT to not delete them in an attempt to hide all the shit that's being thrown at their precious "baby")

While names have been censored to protect the users involve, I will say one thing - this isn't some attempt from antiLO/ULO members to brigade the series' win, there are other comic creators in this discussion as well from the Canvas section who aren't pleased with seeing LO win another Eisner when there are multiple new series from this past year alone which deserve more attention than they're getting. Again, see for yourself if you click on the link above, the vast majority of comments on this post are expressing their disappointment and you can tell from how they've been sitting at the top while all the positive comments are being 'pushed' to the bottom - the like counts say it all.

All of this, paired with the fact that LO didn't win a SINGLE user-voted award during the Webtoonies, goes to show that the Webtoons audience is over LO. They're done with it. It's not relevant anymore, the only ones who still keep up with it are the stans and those holding on in the hopes that the story gets around to resolving the SA plotline and gets its TV show (which I've also mentioned has a real possibility of not happening, at least not now when it would count the most LMAO)

It still gets more likes than any other series on the platform (for now) but you can tell during its current hiatus that when LO is out of sight, it's out of people's minds - despite many of these episodes now being weeks old, their like counts aren't going up, no new readers are being pulled in. And the fact that a series with over 6 million subscribers can barely scratch 100k likes nowadays is... really something.

And that's on its free to read episodes, it's FP episodes - where views count the most because it's where LO makes its money and initial views - aren't even a fraction of what the free episodes often take well over a week to gain at this point.

Episode 252:

And the midseason finale, 253:

Compare it to Down to Earth which gets 70k likes on average on its free episodes (though its current new FP is sitting at the 1k mark), is LO still bringing in higher numbers than other series? Yes. But it's clearly falling to a point where it's going to be on par with every other comic on the platform in no time. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like after it comes back from this poorly-timed hiatus, when all of its official fan groups have also been shuttered preventing people from staying in touch within their own fandom.

Awards like the Webtoonies are, while largely just for street cred, still audience-based, and I really hope the fact that the people have spoken not once, but twice through their engagement with the platform - both through the comment section on LO's Eisner win and the votes in favor of other series in the Webtoonies - will be a major wake-up call to WT that they can't keep trying the same things over and over again expecting different results. They can't keep stuffing money into LO as if advertising or awards are the reason LO isn't pulling in the numbers it used to. They can't keep pretending that LO still has the merit and credibility that it once had 5 years ago.

It's like that comparison from Super Eyepatch Wolf talking about why you shouldn't take advice on how to be "successful" from Youtubers who got famous 5+ years ago:

"Say you decide you want to become a carpenter, and particularly, how to build a nice chair. Think about the kind of person you'd want to learn that skill from. Would it be from someone who has built nice chairs every day for 20 years? Or would it be the guy who built one nice chair five years ago out of a special kind of wood that doesn't exist anymore, who has no experience with the kind of wood available to you now?"

LO is a byproduct of a version of Webtoons that no longer exists. It was fortunate enough to join the Canvas section when the Canvas section was still only lightly populated, before WT started trying to sell the idea that anyone could become "rich" on their platform (an idea largely perpetuated by creators LIKE RACHEL who only became big because WT threw all of their money at them), before Greek myth comics became commonplace (again, something that's a consequence of Rachel/Lore Olympus) and before the romance genre became largely filled with problematic "dark" romances (again, see Lore Olympus).

Do you see the pattern of what I'm talking about here? A lot of what Webtoons became known for was a byproduct of Lore Olympus and series like it, because those series did phenomenally well, due to being in the right place at the right time, so WT went "hey, cool, this makes us lots of money! Let's do more of that!" Obviously this isn't to say that Lore Olympus is the root of all evil here OR that it didn't have its own merit back in the day, but if you make a series that blows every other series out of the water in stats, it's only natural for a company to want to pursue more series and story tropes like it in the hopes that it'll replicate exactly what comics like LO did, completely misunderstanding why LO did well in the first place. At the time, LO's art was unique for the platform, and it was tackling a story that was extremely popular on platforms like Tumblr so it naturally gained a crowd.

But that was five years ago. Since then, the WT audience climate has changed dramatically, as it always does every few years; and LO and WT haven't kept up. We went through a phase of BL, isekai, and now WT seems to be in an odd limbo because it's still clinging to a series from three whole lifetimes ago, especially now with so many of its other signature series either finally ending (True Beauty) or walking away from the platform entirely (Let's Play).

At this point, Lore Olympus is a chair that was nice five years ago, but has since started to fall apart - its paint is chipping, and its legs don't stand up so well anymore - and WT is still trying to sell it you as the exact same chair - with cheap new paint and a few bits and bobs attached to try and convince you that the chair is new - but it's long past its prime. This isn't to say that the chair itself doesn't deserve to exist, just that it shouldn't be given so much proprietary advertising and attention when there are so many other works on the platform that deserve to be uplifted and seen.

LO was good for its era, it was successful for a reason, but we're halfway through 2023 and it's painfully obvious that the comic and the platform's audience is ready to move on to new territories. Webtoons just needs to learn to let go.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Hilary Rose serves up a chef's kiss rebuttal of SNARK to that ridiculous puff piece posted in the NYT newsletter: "Finally! We’re allowed to see Meghan’s kitchen"

[This piece is sooo good I got a bit carried away with the rainbow.]

Having filmed her TV show in someone else’s house, the Duchess of Sussex has released a video of herself cooking at home. Hilary Rose takes a look around:

Continuing what is becoming a regular series on “preposterous things Meghan said today"🤭

we’ll start with Château Meghan itself, the gracious home into which she will one day, no doubt, invite Hello! because it’s the obvious next step for an influencer.🤭

We’ll move on to the publicity drive for her new brand, which already feels old.

And we’ll finish by finding ourselves a nice, dark room and rocking slowly back and forth until it all goes away. Feel freeto skip straight to that last bit.🤭

Her former Royal Highness La Duchesse has graciously filmed a short video of herself in the kitchen of her Montecito home.

The vibe is California château: big limestone arch thing over the range cooker, blue and white tiles, and lots of those wooden cupboards with fancy iron handles that you see in French country houses. There’s lots and lots of brown: cupboards, wooden-topped island unit, floor.

Some think this explains why she didn’t shoot her TV programme here, but I think it compounds the mystery. All Meghan ever wears on screen is white, and white looks good against brown, but apparently it looks even better against someone else’s grey kitchen up the road. Hey ho.🤭

There have been hints about the kitchen in her previous home videos, when she was baking with the fashion designer who made her wedding dress, because her shtick is “all my friends popped in to adore me”.

Turns out it’s cavernous, big enough for two island units, one wooden, one marble-topped. The ceiling stretches high, high above her head, and is hung with some fancy cast-iron cage thing big enough to hold literally dozens of copper pans. So many copper pans! More copper pans than there are in a copper pan shop.

Keeping them clean must be a full-time job for someone. A little person, one imagines, not someone with a silent HRH in front of their name.🤭

There isn’t just a vast range cooker, which we now learn is Viking and therefore presumably a collab waiting to happen, there’s also a double oven and a microwave.

By my reckoning, that’s four ovens, maybe five depending on the Viking, a sentence I never thought to type but really quite enjoyed.

She has an Ottolenghi cookbook, and marinates strawberries in sugar and lemon juice, and there’s a framed photo of a young Harry with his mother on the wall, because William has presumably been edited out of the Montecito script.😭

And so to the video, and a new article in The New York Times, a newspaper with a reassuring track record when it comes to Meghan’s “beastly Brits” narrative.

In the video, she’s in a white knit and white trousers, so perfect for cooking, with her messy (done) hair and her natural (umpteen products and hours in the chair) make-up.👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿

She sprinkles flowers on a pudding, because she sprinkles flowers on everything, then watches while her mother tastes it and spits it out (I wish, but that would be funny so therefore, no).

Doria says it’s delicious, because that’s the only thing people who eat Meghan’s food are allowed to say, even when it’s spaghetti in hot water sauce. 🤭

Watch episode one of her TV programme if you don’t believe me, or take my advice: don’t. Trust me.

Harry pops in to tell his wife that he’s “getting on a work call”, which in the old days could have been code for “popping out for a pint with my mates” but these days, which pub? Whose mates? Poor Harry.

Poor Thomas Markle too — Meghan’s father, who’s also written out of the script.

Meg has a podcast coming up about women, so men are now surplus to the back story.

In previous tellings, she was brought up by her father, who paid for her education and arranged for a car to pick her up from school if he was too busy at work. ⭐⭐��⭐⭐

In this telling, she’s a latchkey kid with a job from the age of 13, brought up by her doting mother, and drawing on the homespun wisdom and apple pie of Grandma Jeanette, Doria’s mother. Oh, and someone called Alvin. I forget who he is, but he has roots in Tennessee.

Honestly? I’m weary of this. Tennessee? Alvin? Did I nod off and miss it? Was he invited to the wedding or was he not attractive enough?🤭

We learn that Meghan’s quick with a lemon zester, which must at least be better than the alternative, and has frozen chicken nuggets and Tater Tots for the children.

If I had more strength to critique the guff about how she “fled Britain and its relentless criticisms to settle in this sunny, affluent enclave”, I would remind her of all the gushing “breath of fresh air” and Markle Sparkle stuff that was said. However, I would also concede that Windsor, although an affluent enclave, can only rarely be described as sunny and Frogmore Cottage doesn’t have the same ring as Château Megs.🤭

We’ll have to agree to disagree on whether her calligraphy and gift-wrapping skills will “set her apart in the crowded influencer field”. I think they’d set her apart as a sales assistant in Tiffany.🤭

But then my hard, cynical heart softened when I learnt that Meghan truly cares which way the radishes are pointing on the charcuterie board. Which of us can say, hand on heart, that we don’t?🤭

But shame on us for being so judgey. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chrissy Teigen don’t have “professional culinary training”, we are told, so why should Meghan? What a compelling argument, with no flaws at all.😂

Meghan has launched a range of products “inspired by her long-lasting love of cooking”🙄

Someone says, “I think she manages to present an authentic version of herself within that artificial space”, which I think is meant to be a compliment.😬

I have a question. What if your authentic version of yourself is grumpy? Do you still celebrate your authentic grumpiness in your artificial space, or suppress it? And how many versions of you can be authentic before the whole façade becomes fake? Other questions: when does “someone wanting to share their joy” about their multimillion-dollar life turn into bragging?

When does urging us to “mimic the magic of Montecito” morph into “let them eat cake, but first buy my flower sprinkles”?👍🏿

“Don’t they know my life hasn’t always been like this?” Meghan says in a despairing attempt to … who knows? Deflect criticism? Make us love her?

Yes, Meghan, we do know your life hasn’t always been like this. The question is: why should we care? 🎉🔥⭐⚡🌟💫

https://www.tumblr.com/saintmeghanmarkle/780226550204399616/savor-the-snark-hillary-rose-on-ms-kitchen-by?source=share

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Dan Zaksheske

Published: Apr 22, 2025

The New York Times published more than 10,000 words about former San Jose State volleyball player Blaire Fleming over the weekend. Fleming is a biological male who identifies as a woman, who competed on the women's team and who helped make the Spartans one of the top teams in their conference. 

Buried deep in the story was a single paragraph that should raise some eyebrows. The author mentions Joanna Harper, a biological male who identifies as a woman and purportedly studies transgender athletes. It's important to note that Harper played an advisory role in the 2015 Olympics transgender decision allowing males to compete in women's Olympic events with testosterone suppression.

But that's not the interesting part. 

"Harper is currently helping to lead an ambitious study of trans adolescents that measures their results on a 10-step fitness test before they start hormone therapy and then, after they have begun to medically transition, every six months for five years," the NYT story reads. 

It continues, "But, she told me when we talked in February, ‘the current climate makes the study somewhat uncertain.’ I assumed she was referring to the Trump administration’s cuts to National Institutes of Health research grants, but she said money was not a problem: The study is being funded by Nike. The problem was Trump’s separate order targeting medical care for transgender youth. ‘If we can’t perform gender-affirming care,’ she explained, ‘then we can’t bring people into the study.’" 

Wait, "the study is being funded by Nike?" Why is a sports apparel company allegedly funding research that focuses on children and young teenagers taking potentially life-altering medications simply to try and prove that males should be allowed in girls' and women's sports? Basic common sense tells us they shouldn't.

Unfortunately, Nike won't answer this question. OutKick has attempted to reach the company several times, and they have not responded. OutKick spoke with sources who had also tried to ask Nike about the study, to no avail. 

In addition, the company has an entire page on its website – titled "No Pride, No Sport" – dedicated to gender ideology causes. Here's what the mission statement reads: "Nike is on a mission to make sport available to everyone, everywhere. We’re continuing our commitment to helping shape a strong culture of LGBTQIA+ belonging and visibility in sport. We’re working to expand sport for the next generation through community grants, athlete partnerships, impactful storytelling, and products that celebrate the full spectrum of LGBTQIA+ expression. Because sport is better when all athletes are free to play as themselves." 

On this page, Nike lists many of the different ways that the company is pushing the ideas of the radical left-wing. This includes partnering with an organization called "The GenderCool Project," which is an "educational campaign sharing powerful, impactful stories about trans and non-binary youth in sport." 

There's also the organization "Not a Phase," which is a "trans-led grassroots movement working to uplift and improve the lives of trans and nonbinary adults through education, funding, and community project initiatives." 

The one area that's conspicuously absent is the study mentioned in the New York Times article, the one that Nike is reportedly helping to fund. The study, led by Kathryn Ackerman of Boston Children's Hospital and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, also includes Joanna Harper and several other researchers. 

Sarah Barker, author of the Substack The Female Category, did a deep-dive into the study itself and the other alleged financial contributors back in October. 

While Nike has not confirmed their financial contribution to the study, Ackerman has said on several occasions that the company is, indeed, providing them with money. 

During a seminar in 2023, Ackerman stated, "Recently, we got some money from Nike, who wanted to study this more… they wanted to look at transgender folks who are going through the transition younger. So, if we are talking about athletes who are pausing puberty and then doing gender-affirming care and cross-hormonal treatment, what happens to them over time." 

Ackerman made it sound like Nike approached her, not the other way around. Again, why? Why is Nike so invested in seeing what happens to pre-pubescent children when they are given potentially harmful and life-altering medications, hormones and surgeries? 

This is a company that constantly preaches about women's sports, and how dedicated it is to supporting women, yet they are allegedly helping to fund a study to see just how much medication male children need to "fairly" compete in women's sports? 

While Ackerman and Harper have both publicly noted Nike's financial interest in the study, during a conference in 2024, Harper discussed the methods of the study but did not disclose Nike providing funding. According to a source, this was very strange. 

"Nothing was stated about Nike… in the presentation; research presentations should always disclose project funders at the end of a slide show. It is not normal for a scientific presentation to exclude funding sources," the source told OutKick. 

So, what is going on here? Well, that's unclear because Nike doesn't seem interested in disclosing its role, if any, in the research. However, allegedly funding a researcher who is a "transgender activist" who then hired a "transgender" PhD to help with the study, makes it seem pretty clear what result they hope to achieve. 

It appears they want a study that says if doctors stop young males from going through puberty – with pharmaceutical intervention – and "transition" them as early as possible, there's no reason they shouldn't be allowed to compete in girls' and women's sports. And, if that study is produced, what is the endgame? To have as many little boys as possible put on puberty-blockers and hormones in a rush to head off puberty? 

How is it possible that more people don't realize how insane that sounds? If this is true, shame on those researchers and shame on Nike. The company would be participating in experiments on kids that our society should qualify as child abuse. Truly disgusting. 

--

By: Dan Zaksheske

Published: April 25, 2025

As OutKick previously reported, Dr. Kathryn Ackerman and researcher Joanna Harper have both publicly stated that Nike is helping to fund a study on youth transgender athletes as young as 12 years old. At first, Nike did not respond to requests about the study to confirm or deny their involvement. 

However, with public pressure mounting, a Nike executive with knowledge of the situation finally contacted OutKick. According to the executive, the study "was never initialized" and "is not moving forward." But what exactly does that mean? Unfortunately, Nike has not provided any clarity. 

OutKick asked the Nike executive if Dr. Ackerman and Harper were wrong to say that Nike funded the study, something both have said multiple times since 2023 and as recently as 2025. The executive said "no one was wrong" but that there might have been some "gaps in the information chain." Again, what does that mean? 

Unfortunately, OutKick also did not receive a response from Dr. Ackerman, who we attempted to reach through multiple means, including her positions at the Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School and The Female Athlete Conference. 

OutKick also contacted Sarah Sowers, the Director of Research Partnerships at the Nike Sport Research Lab. Sowers was referenced specifically by Ackerman during one of her presentations, but Sowers instructed us to contact Nike media relations. 

The New York Times, in their story about transgender volleyball player Blaire Fleming, also reported that Nike was funding the study. OutKick asked the Times if Nike contacted the outlet to demand a retraction. 

"We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting," a New York Times spokesperson told OutKick. 

So, what do we know? We know that during a seminar in 2023, Ackerman stated, "Recently, we got some money from Nike, who wanted to study this more… they wanted to look at transgender folks who are going through the transition younger. So, if we are talking about athletes who are pausing puberty and then doing gender-affirming care and cross-hormonal treatment, what happens to them over time." 

We know that Harper told the New York Times that Nike is funding the study and the New York Times stands by its reporting. We know that Nike now says that the study "was never initialized" and "is not moving forward." What we don't know is if Nike actually provided any funds in the first place, when the decision was made not to "move forward," who might have made that decision, or why they made it. 

Like we said, more questions than answers. Unfortunately, Nike has decided to leave these questions unanswered. 

==

Let me translate: yes, it was all completely true, but now they're hastily shutting it down and covering it up.