Eric Michael Johnson

@ericmjohnson.bsky.social

2230 Followers 1896 Following

Senior Writer/Editor at CBC News, Production Designer at #BlackwaterDnD, academic, TTRPG enthusiast, primate. Unceded territory of Vancouver, BC. https://linktr.ee/EricMichaelJohnson

A boy struggles to pull his horse through a murky green swamp as the Washington Monument can be seen in the distance.
A handsome man stands next to a three-foot tall monster with many yellow eyes, snarling mouths, gangly arms, and other protrusions.
A photoshopped image showing 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler superimposed on a diagram of our solar system.
A D&D portrait of a young tabaxi artificer and orc monk.
A D&D diorama showing a black tower surrounded by four glowing obelisks that have crushed surrounding structures. A central plaza with autumn-colored trees is being overrun with ghouls. An elvish wizard and huitjin devil look on. 1/4
A fake newspaper cover of Weekly World News. It shows a tentacled beast looming over oil tankers with the headline: CTHULHU AGREES TO HELP! USA Makes Pact With Beast To Protect Strait Of Hormuz
A D&D terrain diorama depicting a dark fortress with gold ornaments and bone-lined stairs. Tentacles emerge from the roof and a bottomless pit sits beneath a lich hovering above wrapped in chains. Piles of corpses surround the pit and green smoke emanates from them. A huge creature made from corpses, a bone snake, two flying wraiths bearing scythes, and a ghoul wielding a bloody cleaver are scattered across the scene. 1/4
An elderly white man in a white Team Canada flannel is standing with an attractive young man wearing suit pants and a leather jacket. The young man is raising one leg, which is being held by the elderly gentleman.
A man with glasses, beard, and a suit stands in front of CBC Headquarters in Vancouver.
The exocomp robot Almond Basket from Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Paul Giammati, as the villain Nus Braka, looms over Holly Hunter’s Captain Nahla Ake in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Senator Dasi Oran says, “They don’t even bother to lie badly anymore.” To which Senator Mon Mothma replies, “I suppose that’s the final humiliation.”
A photo of a concerned woman with a headline that reads, “Minneapolis ICE shooting ‘diabolical and unacceptable’ says civil rights lawyer”
A Death Star is under construction where the East Wing of the White House used to be.
David Brooks headlines: No, Not Sanders, Not Ever Maybe Bernie Sanders Is Right I SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING AMERICA NEEDS A MASS MOVEMENT-NOW
Samuel L. Jackson in Jurassic Park says, “Hold onto your butts.”
Poster from One Battle After Another showing Leonardo DiCaprio in a bathrobe holding a rifle and framed by members of the resistance and Sean Penn as the military goon set on destroying him.
Forrest Gump says, “But I think… maybe it’s both. Maybe both get happening at the same time.”
Citarella noted that he's been warning, for more than half a decade, that too many people remain under the mistaken impression that "what happens or the internet isn't real." He added that "the professional commentary class" has been particularly insulated from the power of digital discourse, because "they pay attention to the legacy sources of information, and they're just not having the same media-environment experience as most people in the country. What is needed, Citarella's strategy suggests, is an understanding of a kind of post-internet politics, where, like it or not, online life is embraced as part and parcel of how modern belief systems are formed.
A fireman carries a fire hose while, behind them, a truck with American flags is seen crashed into a Mormon church.
The larger pattern, researchers say, points in the opposite direction: White supremacist, anti-government, and misogynist beliefs account for the lion’s share of ideologically motivated gun violence. Targeting “transgender ideology” as a terrorism category, they warn, confuses identity with ideology, risks licensing violence against anyone who defies gender norms, and shifts attention away from the real drivers of schoolyard violence. “There are no legitimate studies that suggest that a majority of school shootings since 2015 involve trangender people,” said Rachel Carroll Rivas and R.G. Cravens of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project in an email. “Trans people are far more likely to be victimized by gun violence than to perpetrate it.”
Photo of a man, a former marine, holding an American flag surrounded by gas while protesting an ICE facility. A protest sign on the ground reads, “Every ICE agent will be held to account.”
Curtis Evans, of Evanston, a former Marine, carries a U.S. flag through gas deployed by federal officers as they clear protesters from the entrance of the ICE facility in Broadview on Sept. 19, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Newspaper article: Goebbels Ends Careers of Five Actors Who Made "Cracks" About Nazi Rule
A picture of Mon Mothma with the announcement: EMMY WINNER OUTSTANDING WRITING FOR A DRAMA SERIES DAN GILROY ANDOR
A miniature set showing a keep protected by a wooden barricade that has been breached. A dozen ghouls have breached the gates and are wandering around aimlessly as a boat attached to a hot air balloon approaches from the left. 1/4
Two plastic “skeletons” of invertebrate animals: an octopus and a snail.
Music Ask 1. A song you like with a color in the title 2. A song you like with a number in the title 3. A song that reminds you of summertime 4. A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about 5. A song that needs to be played LOUD 6. A song that makes you want to dance 7. A song to drive to 8. A song about drugs or alcohol 9. A song that makes you happy 10. A song that makes you sad 11. A song that you never get tired of 12. A song from your preteen years 13. One of your favorite 80's songs 14. A song that you would love played at your wedding 15. A song that is a cover by another artist 16. One of your favorite classical songs 17. A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke 18. A song from the year that you were born 19. A song that makes you think about life 20. A song that has many meanings to you 21. A favorite song with a person's name in the title 22. A song that moves you forward 23. A song that you think everybody should listen to 24. A song by a band you wish were still together 25. A song by an artist no longer living 26. A song that makes you want to fall in love 27. A song that breaks your heart 28. A song by an artist with a voice that you love 29. A song that you remember from your childhood 30. A song that reminds you of yourself
Text from UK Online Safety Act of 2023: 181 Threatening communications offence (1) A person commits an offence if-(a) (c) the person sends a message (see section 182), (b) the message conveys a threat of death or serious harm, and at the time of sending it, the person— (i) intended an individual encountering the message to fear that the threat would be carried out (whether or not by the person sending the message), or ii) was reckless as to whether an individual encountering the message would fear that the threat would be carried out (whether or not by the person sending the message). (2) "Serious harm" means— (a) serious injury amounting to grievous bodily harm within the meaning of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, (b) rape, (c) assault by penetration within the meaning of section 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, or (d) serious financial loss.
Margaret E Atwood @MargaretAtwood Here's a piece of literature by me, suitable for seventeen-year-olds in Alberta schools, unlike -- we are told -- The Handmaid's Tale. (Sorry, kids; your Minister of Education thinks you are stupid babies.) John and Mary were both very, very good children. They never picked their noses or had bowel movements or zits. They grew up and married each other, and produced five perfect children without ever having sex. Although they claimed to be Christian, they paid no attention to what Jesus actually said about the poor and the Good Samaritan and forgiving your enemies and such; instead, they practised selfish rapacious capitalism, because they worshipped Ayn Rand. (Though they ignored the scene in The Fountainhead where "welcomed rape" is advocated, because who wants to dwell, and also that would have involved sex and would de facto be pornographic. Well, it kind of is, eh?) Oh, and they never died, because who wants to dwell on, you know, death and corpses and yuk? So they lived happily ever after. But while they were doing that The Handmaid's Tale came true and Danielle Smith found herself with a nice new blue dress but no job. The end.
Two screenshots from Terminator 2: Judgement Day with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Part 1. Schwarzenegger as the T-1000 cyborg looks at the road as he’s driving and says: Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. Part 2. Schwarzenegger as the T-1000 cyborg looks to the camera and says: It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29.
A four panel meme involving Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala. Anakin: A Muslim Democratic Socialist won the mayoral primary in Minneapolis. Padme: Great! The Democrats are going to endorse him, right? Anakin: … Padme: The Democrats are going to endorse him, right?
Miniature set for Dungeons & Dragons depicting an overgrown temple in the rainforest. Yuan-ti soldiers cross ramshackle wooden bridges over pools of acid while a purple worm emerges in the background.
A makeshift lighting studio for a miniature D&D set. USB lights have napkins draped over them as diffusers while pieces of black cardboard block the light from reflecting on the flatscreen TV used as a panorama backdrop.
Miniature set for Dungeons & Dragons depicting an overgrown temple in the rainforest. Yuan-ti soldiers cross ramshackle wooden bridges over pools of acid while a purple worm emerges in the background. 1/4
A miniature set of blackened stone and ruined buildings. Two corpses hang from a dead tree and an ominous statue of a skeletal mouth has been carved into the mountain. Ghouls and undead charge out from a ruined temple. 1/4
"I believe the numbers were phony," explained Trump, who also believes that he won the 2020 presidential election, that the Emmys were rigged against him when he was star of The Apprentice, that climate change is a hoax, that Finland rakes its forests to prevent wildfires, and (my personal favorite) that magnets don't work when you pour water on them.
ChatGPT-5 prompt: Create an accurate anatomical diagram of a great white shark with clear labels of all major organs.
ChatGPT-5 prompt: “Show me a map of Europe in 1848. Label each country at the time.”
Incorrect diagram of Canadian Prime Ministers created by ChatGPT-5.
Incorrect list of Canadian Prime Ministers created by ChatGPT-5.
Silly portait of Joe Biden.
ChatGPT-5 result for the prompt: “Think hard. Show me a diagram of the US presidents since FDR, with their names and years in office under their photos.”
Another novel feature of the deals that the Trump Administration has made is that, under duress, Japan and the E.U. pledged to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States. Evidently, Trump is using the same playbook with which he bullied universities and law firms by threatening to withhold federal funding and contracts. There is also a historical analogy. The new Trumpian trade regime, featuring tribute transfers to the hegemon as well as high tariff walls, resembles the extractive economic policies of the Ming dynasty more than the open trade order to which American Presidents from Harry Truman to Barack Obama pledged fealty. "In Europe, we still have the habit of thinking of the U.S. as a friend and ally," Riekeles quipped. Trump is helping many non-Americans to break this habit. At home, meanwhile, he is resorting to the actions of a petty dictator by attacking the independent central bank and firing an economic scorekeeper. If he persists with this strategy, it will further undermine the credibility and strength of the U.S. economy, but it surely won't enable him to disguise the consequences of his policies. They are already becoming clearer.
Katie Drummond: I want to make sure I understand. Your premise here is that Al will be this transformational technology that will extend our lifespan in some way, and there is not an ideology that supports mankind at that moment? Brian Johnson: I'm saying nobody knows what's going to happen. All we know is that Al is improving at a rate that is unfathomable to our minds. Now, that doesn't stop humans from saying, "I will explain to you what's going to happen. It's going to make the world an abundant place, and we humans are going to be able to do whatever we want, and we're going to have one day a week where we work." Katie Drummond: To be clear, I think that's a very utopian and very unlikely scenario.
“Liu has been making the solution in his rented apartment in Beijing by mixing citric acid with sodium chlorite, according to an account he shared earlier this month on his Substack that revealed that a ‘violent explosion’ occurred when he made a mistake.” "’The blast blacked out my vision,’ Liu wrote. ‘Dense clouds of chlorine dioxide burst into my face, filling my eyes, nose, and mouth. I stumbled back into the apartment, rushing to the bathroom to wash out the gas from my eyes and respiratory tract. My lungs were burning. Later, I would find 4-5 cuts on my upper thigh-shards of glass had pierced through my pants.’ Liu also revealed that his 3-year-old daughter was nearby when the explosion happened.”
Miniature set depicting an ancient jungle temple. Wooden bridges cross a mysterious green liquid as various yuan-ti attack and a purple worm emerges in the background. 1/4
Article from The Guardian from July 21, 2025. Headline reads: “Migrants at Ice jail in Miami made to kneel to eat 'like dogs', report alleges.”
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK JANE DOE, proceeding under a pseudonym, Plaintiff, V. DONALD J. TRUMP and JEFFREY E. EPSTEIN, Defendants. JURY TRIAL DEMANDED COMPLAINT FOR RAPE, SEXUAL MISCONDUCT, CRIMINAL SEXUAL ACTS, SEXUAL ABUSE, FORCIBLE TOUCHING, ASSAULT, BATTERY, INTENTIONAL AND RECKLESS INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS, DURESS, FALSE IMPRISONMENT, AND DEFAMATION Plaintiff Jane Doe, proceeding under a pseudonym, brings this action against Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein…
Letter from U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi to F.B.I. Director Kash Patel on Feb. 27, 2025: Dear Director Patel, Before you came into office, l requested the full and complete files related to Jeffrey Epstein. In response to this request, I received approximately 200 pages of documents, which consisted primarily of flight logs. Epstein's list of contaets, and a list of victims' names and phone numbers. I repcatedly questioned whether this was the full set of documents responsive to my request and was repeatedly assured by the FBI that we had received the full set of documents. Late yesterday, I learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein. Despite my repeated requests, the FBI never disclosed the existence of these files. When you and I spoke yesterday, you were just as surprised as I was to learn this new information. By 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, February 28, the FBI will deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office, including all records, documents, audio and video recordings, and materials related to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients, regardless of how such information was obtained. There will be no withholdings or limitations to my or your access. The Department of Justice will ensure that any public disclosure of these files will be done in a manner to protect the privacy of victims and in accordance with law, as I have done my entire career as a prosecutor. I am also directing you to conduct an immediate investigation into why my order to the FBI was not followed. You will deliver to me a comprehensive report of your findings and proposed personnel action within 14 days. I appreciate your immediate attention to this important matter. I know that we are both committed to transparency for the American people, and I look forward to continuing to work with you to serve our President and our country. Pamela Bondi Attorney General
Newsweek article from July 16, 2025 that reads: “Seven Republicans voted down an ammenment [sic] to force a congressional vote over Epstein files.”
The nominees for the Emmy in the category of Best Drama Series. Andor, The Diplomat, The Last of Us, Paradise, The Pitt, Severance, Slow Horses, and The White Lotus.
Row after row of computers screens illuminating an army of mutant monkeys furiously typing negative comments about Superman.
Theatrical poster with the words How To Blow Up A Pipeline in large red letters over a scene of three activists carrying a makeshift bomb.
Quotation from Robert Heinlein’s novel “Stranger in a Strange Land.” “And 'grok' means all of these, depending on how you use it. It means 'fear,' it means 'love,' it means 'hate' —proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot possibly hate anything unless you grok it completely, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you-then and only then can you hate it. By hating yourself.”
Nemik’s Manifesto from Andor Season 1, Episode 5 “The Axe Forgets” THERE WILL BE TIMES WHEN THE STRUGGLE SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this: FREEDOM IS A PURE IDEA. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. AND EVEN THE SMALLEST ACT OF INSURRECTION PUSHES OUR LINES FORWARD And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this: the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires's authority and then there will be one too many. ONE SINGLE THING WILL BREAK THE SIEGE. REMEMBER THIS: TRY.
A small child stands alone facing a decaying apartment building. The child wears a blue patterned winter coat with the hood up, dark pants, and boots, standing on a wet, cracked street with a few shallow puddles. Their back is to the viewer, emphasizing their smallness against the deteriorating urban landscape.
Updated text from a NYT article that reads: “The data was shared with The Times by an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X. He provided the data under condition of anonymity, although his identity has been made public elsewhere. He is an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about 1.Q. and race.”
Jordan Lasker, AKA 'Cremieux' One of the speakers at the conference is billed under a social media alias, Cremieux, but the Guardian has corroborated that the account is apparently run by Jordan Lasker, a long-time proponent of eugenics. The @cremieuxrecueil X account has been boosted or engaged with dozens of times by that platform's proprietor, Elon Musk, often on the topic of falling birthrates. On 27 November, Musk reposted a Cremieux comment on falling birthrates, adding: "With rare exception, all countries are trending towards population collapse." On 29 April, Cremieux posted: "Only about a third of the world even meets replacement rate fertility. This is the biggest problem of our time." Musk responded: "Yes." Musk has also boosted or responded favorably to Cremieux posts on other rightwing hobby horses such as crime in Portland, Oregon, and allegations that Democrats had created loopholes in the asylum system. Away from X, Cremieux runs a Substack also featuring posts on the supposed relationships between race and IQ. A prominently featured post there seeks to defend the argument that average national IQs vary by up to 40 points, with countries in Europe, North America, and East Asia at the high end and countries in the global south at the low end, and several African countries purportedly having average national IQs at a level that experts associate with mental impairment. Those arguments, first made in a book by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, are now so discredited that journals including Proceedings of the Royal Society and Psychological Science have retracted articles that relied on the data. In 2020, the scholarly European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association published a blanket condemnation of Lynn's data alongside its code of conduct on its website, writing: "Any conclusions drawn from these data are both untenable, and likely to give rise to racist conclusions."