Chris Lovett

@RpsAgainstTrump Self-excommunicated.

“As of today, I no longer consider myself a Catholic” Fox News’ Sean Hannity makes it pretty clear: Trump comes before everything, even over his religion. It’s a cult.

@LanaSofka @atrupar Gleichfalls Freiheit macht Arbeit.

Dr Oz: "If we could get the average American to start working a year earlier, right out of high school, or a year later -- not retire -- or work better during their lifetime because they're healthy, it would generate about $3 trillion to the US economy. That would more than remove the debt."

@ChrisMurphyCT If Trump does take over Columbia, I guess it will have to reassume its original name--"King's College."

In the wake of the stunning news that Trump is planning to take over Columbia University, I hope you’ll watch this speech I gave yesterday. It details Trump’s plan to destroy democracy’s organs of accountability and dissent: the press, universities and lawyers. 1/ Intro

The great deal-maker stocks up on "dead souls."

Yesterday afternoon. Tremont Street, Boston. #HandsOff2025

@knbaraldi Bolaño: “Uno tiene la obligación moral de ser responsible de sus actos y también de sus palabras e incluso de sus silencios,... porque también los silencios ascienden al Cielo y los oye Dios y soló Dios los comprende y los juzga... Mis silencios son inmaculados.”

Roberto Bolaño y los tres silencios literarios: "El silencio de Rulfo creo que obedece a algo tan cotidiano, que explicarlo es perder el tiempo. Hay varias versiones. Una que explicaba Monterroso es que Rulfo tenía a su tío fulanito, que le contaba historias, y cuando le preguntaron por qué ya no escribía, él contestó porque se me murió el tío fulanito. Y yo me lo creo, además. Otra explicación es simple y sencilla, y es porque ya está, todo tiene fecha de caducidad. Por ejemplo, a mí me inquieta mucho más el silencio rimbaudiano que el silencio rulfiano. Rulfo deja de escribir porque él ya había escrito todo lo que quería escribir y, como se ve incapaz de escribir algo mejor, simplemente para. Rimbaud probablemente hubiera podido escribir algo mucho mejor, que ya es decir palabras muy altas, pero ése es un silencio que a los occidentales nos plantea preguntas. El silencio de Rulfo no plantea preguntas, es hasta un silencio entrañable, es cotidiano. Después del postre, ¿qué coño vas a comer? Hay un tercer silencio literario, que es el no buscado, el de las sombras que uno está seguro de que estaban allí en el umbral y que no han llegado a ser jamás hechos tangibles. Por ejemplo, está el silencio de Georg Büchner. Él muere a los 25 o a los 24 años, deja tres o cuatro obras de teatro que son cuatro obras maestras, una de ellas 'Woyzeck', una obra maestra absoluta, otra sobre la muerte de Danton, que es una obra maestra enorme, no absoluta pero notabilísima, y las otras dos, una se llama 'Leonce y Lena' y la otra no me acuerdo, que son de una importancia fundamental. Todo esto antes de cumplir 25 años. ¿Qué hubiera pasado si Büchner no hubiera muerto, qué escritor hubiera habido ahí? Y este silencio no buscado es el silencio de…, no me atrevo a llamarlo destino…, es una manifestación de la impotencia. El silencio de la muerte es el peor de los silencios, porque el silencio rulfiano es un silencio aceptado y el rimbauldiano es un silencio buscado, pero el silencio de la muerte es el que corta de tajo lo que pudo ser y nunca más va a poder ser, lo que no sabremos jamás. No sabremos nunca si Büchner hubiera sido más grande que Goethe o no; yo creo que sí, pero no lo sabremos nunca. No sabremos jamás que habría podido escribir Büchner a los 30 años. Y eso mismo se extiende en todo el planeta como una mancha, una enfermedad atroz que de alguna u otra manera pone en jaque nuestras costumbres, nuestras certezas más arraigadas". Entrevista con Eliseo Álvarez Revista Turia, Teruel, junio de 2005 Foto: August Sander «Jóvenes campesinos», Westervald, 1912 (Portada de 'Bartleby y compañía' de Enrique Vila-Matas)

via @dotnews: The makings of the last close call for an incumbent Boston mayor: White vs. Timilty in 1975. Photo from 1979 rematch. dotnews.com/2025/parade-bo…

@tylercreighton And to think the boss blames the agency for “destroying people’s lives.”

Mayor Wu responds to Josh Kraft's launch “Frankly, I’m a little surprised that someone who hasn’t even voted for mayor or City Council in the city, thinks that he is ready to lead the city, but I look forward to getting into the details and there’s so much to talk about"

@RonDurk I think I've seen that face before, in 2013. In Boston politics, some figures come and go, like furniture, while others are more like wallpaper.

It’s alarming to see Josh Kraft associating with Joao DePiña, a known harasser who followed me into City Hall, shouting misogynistic insults. I had to file a police report this year. We deserve a mayor who stands for respect—not one who surrounds himself with people like this.

@atrupar Could this mean placing CA, if not under martial law, then some kind of receivership, as with "MAC" for NYC in 1975? Relief for CA has much less Red state support than it would for Florida, Texas, Louisiana, N. Carolina.

BRENNAN: Do you expect though that Republicans will still help Californians in need even if they don't like their local politics and the party? SEN. BARRASSO: I expect there will be strings attached to money that is ultimately approved ...

@allenanalysis I don't mind the visas as much as the rationale that it's useless trying to develop the necessary skills among people already living here--through good schools. This is not the same standard applied to good-old factory jobs.

Trump’s trying to rewrite history again. He spent years demonizing immigrants, but now H-1B visas are about ‘competence’? Translation: he’s catering to billionaires who want cheap labor while pretending it’s about ‘smart people.’ Classic flip-flop when it benefits his donors. Not that there is anything wrong with immigrants, it’s just funny seeing him flip-flop like this.

@johnstonglenn JD Salinger cited the same quartet when he praised Seymour's "non-stop talks," comparing them to "the bulk of Beethoven's output after he ceased being encumbered with a sense of hearing."

The music that inspired Samuel Beckett: “Intensity beyond anything I have ever heard” faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-music-that…

@FlutoShinzawa Sacco'd.

Jim Montgomery is out. nytimes.com/athletic/58905…

via bsky.app/profile/dotnew…: data prompt small changes in admissions policy for Boston exam schools--and more analysis to come. dotnews.com/2024/new-data-…

@johnstonglenn It snowed in Dickens, it snowed in Tolstoy, it snowed in Chekhov and Pushkin, it snowed in Orhan Pamuk, and it snowed when Kafka's misdirected land surveyor approached the Castle. Like it says: "snow was general."

Favourite Just Joyce trivia: Joyce borrowed a name and possibly the snow motif for The Dead from Bret Harte’s novel Gabriel Conroy. It begins: "Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye could reach...fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave."

@BetterBlueThanX @DotNews I thought of this, especially because of the drop in "student" area voting. There were also Democratic losses in areas with low income, less consistent engagement--maybe averse to funding for Israel & Ukraine, but not the same as campus outrage about "genocide."

@cmslovett @DotNews Young progressive voters opposing US role in Netanyahu's war thinned the ranks?

via @dotnews. A look at Boston's presidential vote: less a Trump surge than Democrats unplugged. dotnews.com/2024/boston-vo…

@ProudPatriots1 Does it come with a shot glass?

🥃 Bulletproof Trump Whiskey Glass 🇺🇸 Handmade in the USA

@atrupar Maybe more important than cabinet wealth is the private equity ethos. This considers government as one more underperforming asset from which to extract more value--for the apex extractors.

Chris Murphy: "We talk a lot about the coming dictatorship, but I think what's really coming is what you would call an oligarchy."

Campaign finance regulators, in Nov. 14 letter released this week, dinged Boston Cllr Tania Fernandes Anderson for violations, including late disclosures of financial activity More could be coming. The person listed as her treasurer told me weeks ago he no longer works for her