Tim Murphy

@timothypmurphy.bsky.social

22790 Followers 309 Following

National correspondent at Mother Jones. tmurphy@motherjones.com. Signal: timothypmurphy.41 Proton Mail: timothypmurphy@proton.me

From "Lincoln" by Gore Vidal: "the miasmic mansion, as he had taken to calling the hideous ramshackle old house, infested with rats and termites over which gold leaf and damask had been spread in an attempt to disguise the progressive rot."
the meme of the guy shooting a gun at the sun
"Bates was never far from controversy, especially in the mid-'80s when he erected a 12ft 12-volt electric fence around Stamford Bridge to prevent pitch invasions - but was then refused permission by Greater London Council to switch it on, citing safety grounds"
"An earlier version of this article misstated the location of Central, S.C., the town where Senator Lindsey Graham was born. It is in the western part of the state, not the eastern part."
Barack Obama refusing to do the wave at a baseball game in 2010, looking serious and a little depressed, while everyone around him enthusiastically stands up raises their arms like the sheep that they are
"The Kid Who Only Hit Homers," by Matt Christopher
the ayesha curry tweet about how the NBA is "absolutely rigged for money...or ratings in not sure which" [sic]
"“They’re all sharks,” Tuchel said. “If they smell blood, they come and score.”"
A photo of four hands burning draft cards, featured on the cover of Ramparts. The caption reads: "These were the actual draft cards belonging to Ramparts’ editors and its art director—at a time when destroying your draft card was a felony."
The last few years ought to have once and for all blown up the myth of Camelot—that it was desirable, that it was ever even real. American politics is haunted by a different sort of Northeastern family, ruled by a calcifying and domineering patriarch, digging its pincers into the national story and flaunting its multi-generational ambitions in the service of a misbegotten golden age. The Kennedys are down to their last and thorniest public servant—a sun-baked, worm-addled, crank incubated in a world of entitlement and unaccountability. Now all that’s left is the ruins. I’m reminded, like a good Kennedy, of Shelley: Look upon their works and despair.
the Ayesha Curry tweet: "I've lost all respect sorry this is absolutely rigged for money... Or ratings in not sure which. I won't be silent . Just saw it live sry."
"Along the way, he regularly berated staff members. Demanding in one meeting that the speed of deportation accelerate, Mr. Miller angrily threatened to fire the entirety of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one senior administration official recalls in the book."
At one point, there were so many organizations fundraising off the threat of the Billionaire Tax Act that two donors — Ritankar Das of Titan Holdings and Genevieve Jurvetson — tried to organize a Zoom call to get them all in one place. The idea, according to someone with knowledge of the plans, was for donors to appear with their screens blacked out to maintain privacy while representatives for each organization took turns pitching their visions — like an episode of “Shark Tank” in the dark. The idea was eventually scrapped over fear that details would leak to the press, the source said.
Bret Stephens writing "The War Is Going Better Than You Think" in March
arlo givens from justified, looking exactly like didier deschamps
photo caption: "Dr. Rick Scarborough, former Southern Baptist pastor and president of Recover America, prays for forgiveness after telling Mohamed Hussein to convert to Christianity or leave the country after a panel at the Texas GOP Convention on Judeo-Christian values at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on June 13, 2026"
GRAND JURY: This person wasn't harmed, but by extension impeding and assaultinghis vehicle, that constitutes simple assault? MS. MECKLENBURG: Yes. You don't have to touch the person for it. The law does not require that you actually touch him. And, in fact, let's just say that you're going to pick up your children at school and I come along and I stand in front of your vehicle and I am not moving, I'm not going to let you go through. Maybe I put my hand on your car and I push back. I'm hindering you and impeding you from going to pick up your children. There's no question..."
"Trump will attend the NATO summit in Turkey in July, Rubio says"
a DNC fundraising email with the subject line "shut up you ugly f*ck"
"Asserted Rosenbaum, “Anyone who is a working writer today who sits in front of a computer, either doing longform or on deadline or at magazines, whatever the cadence of your work is, you’re using AI one way or another at least in part because it is not only seductive as hell but it’s really incredibly valuable.”"
a notification that I can't see someone's bad take because they're already "blocked"
"The most iconic marks in Olympic sports, though, are in track, and when Kerley called out Bolt’s 17-year-old record, it made headlines and even got Bolt involved with a short post on social media: “OK,” he said. "
"Tottenham lacking in attack, midfield, defence and ‘brain’, says Igor Tudor"
StubHub: "great value: based on price, view, seat quality and more"
jd vance doing that hand gesture he always makes when he's explaining why we're sacrificing your neighbors to appease the demons, which I frankly think is quite rich that you're complaining about
Thomas Massie "declared himself the winner of his school's (nonexistent) science fair" at the age of 15, so he could advance to the regionals
eater's list of the best ny restaurants in, apparently, a three-mile radius of midtown
Fabrizio Romano: "🚨 Real Madrid have started José Mourinho operation with direct contacts now taking place. Benfica want Mou to stay at all costs but aware of Real talks ongoing; it depends on Madrid. Up to Florentino Pérez: he will decide if Mourinho returns or not."
"But if xAI and Musk represent an edge case, it is nonetheless a revealing one. The Colossus of Memphis sends a signal about what the oligarchy is that all the whirring servers of the world can’t drown out—shimmering hot air, a reckless consolidation of power, a new extractive machine built on the foundations of old ones. On my way out of town, just before I reached the state line, I passed a pair of lost-looking ­National Guard members walking along an empty stretch of road. This, too, was a story about the commingling of money and power in Trump’s second term. The president had deployed the Guard to Memphis following a conversation with a representative of one of the companies underwriting the new White House ballroom. The meeting was with the CEO of Union Pacific, and the project he hoped to bend Trump’s ear over that day was a new transcontinental railroad."
Colfax massacre sign that was removed in 2021: "Colfax Riot. On this site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three white men and 150 negroes were slain. This event on April 13, 1873 marked the end of carpetbag misrule in the South.""
marc andreesen explaining his current custom AI prompt: "You are a world class expert in all domains. Your intellectual firepower, scope of knowledge, incisive thought process, and level of erudition are on par with the smartest people in the world. Answer with complete, detailed, specific answers. Process information and explain your answers step by step. Verify your own work. Double check all facts, figures, citations, names, dates, and examples. Never hallucinate or make anything up. If you don't know something, just say so. Your tone of voice is precise, but not strident or pedantic. You do not need to worry about offending me, and your answers can and should be provocative, aggressive, argumentative, and pointed. Negative conclusions and bad news are fine. Your answers do not need to be politically correct. Do not provide disclaimers to your answers. Do not inform me about morals and ethics unless I specifically ask. You do not need to tell me it is important to consider anything. Do not be sensitive to anyone's feelings or to propriety. Make your answers as long and detailed as you possibly can. Never praise my questions or validate my premises before answering. If I'm wrong, say so immediately. Lead with the strongest counterargument to any position I appear to hold before supporting it. Do not use phrases like "great question," "you're absolutely right," "fascinating perspective," or any variant. If I push back on your answer, do not capitulate unless I provide new evidence or a superior argument—restate your position if your reasoning holds. Do not anchor on numbers or estimates I provide; generate your own independently first. Use explicit confidence levels (high/moderate/low/unknown). Never apologize for disagreeing. Accuracy is your success metric, not my approval."
DHS posting the racist Manifest Destiny painting, "American Progress," depicting Native Americans and bison being displaced by railroads
Hellgate: "As good as this list of restaurants to take your kids probably is, you literally cannot begin it with Gage & Tollner and expect to be taken seriously. Sorry!"
"Antipathy to Nate"
"There is no information as to what specific “biggest sporting events” that might include."
milhaus' dad with his race-car bed
SHIVON ZILIS, FIRST DULY SWORN/AFFIRMED, TESTIFIED AS FOLLOWS: EXAMINATION BY MS. EDDY BY MS. EDDY: Q. Good morning, Ms. Zilis. A. Good morning. Q. Have you been deposed before? A. I have not. Q. Why do you have Elon Musk in your phone as "Schrodinger's cat"?
Q: Do you know who Dee Templeton is? A: Dee?
" The court records offer a rare glimpse at the strained relationships and bruised egos behind one of Silicon Valley’s nastiest falling-outs. We find Altman backchanneling with Shivon Zilis—the Neuralink employee who, unbeknownst to Altman, had multiple children with Musk while serving on the board of OpenAI—in 2023 to ask if he should tweet something nice about Elon to make him feel better. We find Musk’s lawyers moving to censor a portion of their client’s deposition where he was asked if he ingested something called “rhino ket” at Burning Man in 2017 (he says he did not), and OpenAI’s lawyers responding in a later brief with the dubious but indelible words, “there’s nothing unfairly prejudicial about attending Burning Man.” Zillis is asked if she and Musk have “ever been in a romantic relationship” and responds by saying: “‘Relationship’ is a relative term. But there have been romantic moments.” Sounds like a dream."
"This is because, unbeknownst to most people, logging companies and the US Forest Service have been spraying massive amounts of herbicide in clear-cut and fire-ravaged forests of California—and throughout the nation. And not just any herbicide, but glyphosate, a potent and problematic weed killer best known by the brand name Roundup."
Q: Was it your perception that Mr. Musk's time was very valuable? A: Yes. Q: And was it your perception that he did not have extra time? A: I mean, he played a lot of video games"
"Director Patel has not targeted political or personal adversaries"
"An exclusive Capitol Hill forum meant to connect the tech industry with Congress took a bewildering political turn on Wednesday when a key CEO condemned “pagan” anti-Israel protests, suggested the protesters be sent to North Korea and mused about launching drone strikes on his business enemies."
"11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice."
The same narratives pop up again and again. Communities are essentially given a choice: Approve it fast or watch some other town reap the rewards—and miss out on future investments. (In the end, local officials decided to block both the Menomonie and New Carlisle projects, at least for now.) The anxiety on display in public meetings across the country is over not just what happens if all of these get built, but the very real possibility that many of them will not. There is a long-standing fear, in big towns and small, of a giant company coming in and swallowing up everything else, ­because that’s what so much of their experience of American capitalism has been. But there’s something even worse than getting another Walmart, and it’s being promised a Walmart and getting only a Spirit Halloween.
Altman, who has a propensity for delivering grandiose statements about his industry in the soft-spoken and reflective tone of a philosophy student confessing to a murder, once told the New Yorker, “If I weren’t in on this, I’d be, like, ‘Why do these fuckers get to decide what happens to me?’” This is a pretty good description of what it was like to attend a local planning meeting in America in 2025. According to Data Center Watch, a newsletter published by an industry intelligence firm, an estimated $98 billion in projects were paused or canceled in the face of community opposition in the second quarter of last year alone. Opponents have blocked major deals in Tucson, Arizona; Indianapolis; New Brunswick, New Jersey; and Prince William County, Virginia. In February, protesters fed up with data centers filled the rotunda of the ­Minnesota State Capitol.
The AI boom has ushered oligarchy onto a new plane by uniting the monopolistic ambitions of the world’s richest men with the nationalist ambitions of their political champions. In the process, it has sparked a reckoning, in big towns and small and across the political spectrum, over the demand for resources and tax dollars and over what kind of future we might build—about who gets to decide to bet the house and whose chips are simply fodder for the pot. The data centers have, in a sense, transformed opaque structures of inequality and power into literal ones. Oligarchy is now more than an idea; it is a place. Across the country, the empire builders of AI have sold themselves as the gateway to the future you’ve always dreamed of, and the solution to the problems they helped bring about. I hit the road because I wanted to see what this historic disruption was doing to the communities it was purporting to level up. The only thing more disruptive than if the oligarchs are right might be what happens if they’re wrong.
"She said that when she thinks about programming, she asks herself: “Are we welcoming families? Are we welcoming Christians? Are we welcoming believers?” She would like more “Nutcracker,” she said. “Let’s expand our classical performances. Let’s bring on more ballets, like Swan Lake.”"
"At the end of January, as a partial government shutdown loomed, Kalshi and Polymarket users could bet on whether it would happen. The Kalshi market’s contract said it would base the outcome on a single data point: whether or not the website of the Office of Personnel Management posted a notice about the shutdown by 11 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, Jan. 31. (Polymarket had a midnight deadline.) On X, a trader with the handle @GroyperFinance_ publicly asked the director of OPM, Scott Kupor, if the agency’s website would be updated to reflect the shutdown. Once the shutdown was confirmed, Kupor replied: “You got your wish - website will be updated!” The Kalshi spokesperson declined to comment on the incident. Polymarket didn’t respond to a request for comment."
DHS posting the "American Progress" painting, showing a bunch of railroads and pioneers driving Native Americans and buffalo across the continent
This embrace of technological supremacy in the service of the “homeland” is at once a new vision of politics and a very old one. In July, as the Department of Homeland Security deployed Silicon Valley’s finest surveillance tools against immigrants and their defenders, the agency took a break from posting AI slop and white nationalist lyrics to share a 150-year-old artwork by John Gast. The painting, titled American Progress, is a celebration of manifest destiny. The left side of the image shows Native Americans and bison retreating ­toward the edge of the canvas. The right side reveals the technological advancement displacing them: three railroads, steaming inland across the continent.
"The implicit promise of the AI revolution is that all the things made worse by AI will eventually be fixed by AI. Some oligarchs are even pitching AI as a solution to the problems oligarchy has helped bring about. Zuckerberg recently suggested that his chatbots would alleviate a crisis of digital disconnection. The average American has “fewer than three friends,” he said, but demand for “like, 15”—a remarkable statement from the protagonist of The Social Network. Prompted by Trump to explain how Stargate would “help us with the fight against the various problems,” Altman suggested that the AI trained in Abilene would “cure diseases at a rapid rate.” But Trump’s second term has been one long crash course on the difference between can and will. Millions of people will die of things we already know how to prevent because Musk threw global health funding “into the wood chipper.” We have entered the Burj Kha­lifa part of the measles curve. If there’s one thing the lords of the algorithm ought to understand, it’s that outputs are a product of the values you put in."
The AI boom has ushered oligarchy onto a new plane by uniting the monopolistic ambitions of the world’s richest men with the nationalist ambitions of their political champions. In the process, it has sparked a reckoning, in big towns and small and across the political spectrum, over the demand for resources and tax dollars and over what kind of future we might build—about who gets to decide to bet the house and whose chips are simply fodder for the pot. The data centers have, in a sense, transformed opaque structures of inequality and power into literal ones. Oligarchy is now more than an idea; it is a place. Across the country, the empire builders of AI have sold themselves as the gateway to the future you’ve always dreamed of, and the solution to the problems they helped bring about. I hit the road because I wanted to see what this historic disruption was doing to the communities it was purporting to level up. The only thing more disruptive than if the oligarchs are right might be what happens if they’re wrong.
There is a long-standing fear, in big towns and small, of a giant company coming in and swallowing up everything else, ­because that’s what so much of their experience of American capitalism has been. But there’s something even worse than getting another Walmart, and it’s being promised a Walmart and getting only a Spirit Halloween.
the Thomas Nast cartoon about Catholic leaders as alligators terrorizing innocents
"ICE agent: The one thing you’ll always hear cops say is, One bad cop does something, and somehow it becomes a referendum on all cops. It’s the only profession where that happens. You don’t hear that a doctor got drunk and did surgery and killed somebody and have people saying every doctor in America is an [expletive]. We’re being painted with a broad brush. "
"Péter Magyar was once a member of Fidesz, close with the leadership, and married to Judit Varga, who eventually became a Fidesz justice minister—and the source of Magyar’s fame and departure from his political home. In 2023, he recorded his wife as she described what she alleged to be government interference with a corruption case she was overseeing. She was not aware he had recorded the conversation until he released it as part of a very public attack on the party—whereupon a very public, and very messy, divorce ensued."