Jacob Wolman
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Jacob Wolman
@wolmania.com
180 followers 160 following 1.9K posts
I'm interested in politics, technology, art, and the rule of three. I write a dumb weekly newsletter which may be found at https://newsletter.wolmania.com.
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wolmania.com
Underappreciated takeaway from this piece is that Chuck Grassley is scum www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Patel fired four more agents who worked on Arctic Frost after Grassley released documents from whistle-blowers naming them. Coordination between Grassley and the F.B.I's office of congressional affairs was unusually close throughout the year. Marshall Yates, the head of the O.C.A., and his team combed through the F.B.I.'s files to identify agents they thought were biased, according to congressional aides. Former law-enforcement officials believe these agents are among those whose names Grassley is making public, bypassing the F.B.I's protections for employees. (A Grassley spokeswoman said his disclosures followed the rules and were thoroughly vetted over months or years.) Yates and Rosemaria Marketos, a former CR-15 agent working with him, were also members of the Weaponization Working Group, a task force created by Bondi to address "abuses of the criminal-justice process" during the Biden administration. Christopher O'Leary, former senior executive in the counterterrorism division: The irony of the name "weaponization group" is rich. They are doing what they said the Biden administration did. If the weaponization group and the office of congressional affairs have merged at a certain level, that is very problematic for two reasons. First, this merger abandons the F.B.I's history of being unbiased. Second, O.C.A. becomes another bullhorn for this administration's political narrative. The people paying the price are the public servants in the F.B.I. and D.O.J., and more broadly, the American people.
January 23, 2026 at 1:50 AM
wolmania.com
Why is the headline like this?
Trump's Racial Politics President Trump said that civil rights resulted in white people being "very badly treated," in a nod to what's behind his anti-diversity crusade.
January 14, 2026 at 5:10 PM
wolmania.com
I dunno, maybe it would have been better to recast the character and deal with a few weeks of embarrassment rather than tear up the plan and hope people like incoherent nostalgic slop? www.theringer.com/2026/01/14/m...
In fairness to Marvel and Feige, the studio did have a more cohesive plan in place at one point. Multiverse Saga projects such as Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania helped establish the foundations for the crossover that was originally intended: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Of course, everything changed when Majors’s Kang was jettisoned. Now, to compensate for the apparent lack of connective narrative tissue between the many movies and TV shows of the Multiverse Saga, Marvel is rolling out these teasers, and it will likely continue to roll out character updates in the weeks and months to come.
January 14, 2026 at 1:49 PM
wolmania.com
I guess the New York Times is just never going to straightforwardly say things like "Kristi Noem lied" or "this is a blatant violation of the Constitutional right to freedom of expression" or "the administration is a blood-thirsty fascist death cult". www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/u...
Justice Department officials under Mr. Trump have long maintained that investigating and punishing protesters who organized efforts to physically obstruct or disrupt immigration enforcement is a legitimate subject of federal inquiries. But casting a broad net over the activist community in Minneapolis, former department officials and critics of the administration said, raises the specter that forms of political protest traditionally protected by the First Amendment could be criminalized. But even though investigators have not made public a specific allegation that anyone aside from Ms. Good and her wife were involved in an encounter with federal agents that day, the Justice Department is still planning to examine a wide group of activists who took part in the neighborhood watch activities, believing they were “instigators” of the shooting, the people familiar with the inquiry said. Over the weekend, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, echoed Mr. Vance’s remarks, asserting that Ms. Good had “weaponized” her vehicle and that the ICE agent, Mr. Ross, had “defended his life.” “If you look at what the definition of domestic terrorism is,” Ms. Noem said, “it completely fits the situation on the ground.” Experts in domestic terrorism cases said the administration had jumped the gun in lodging accusations like that and failed to follow the traditional procedures for determining whether a case should be classified as domestic terrorism. “It’s not appropriate for officials to characterize this incident as domestic terrorism before the investigation is complete,” said Thomas E. Brzozowski, the former counsel for domestic terrorism in the Justice Department’s national security division. “There used to be a process, deliberate and considered, to figure out if behavior could be legitimately described as domestic terrorism.”
January 13, 2026 at 11:19 AM
wolmania.com
As for Max's theory (which is very plausible), and in addition to his skepticism about whether Musk is really such a dangerous guy, I would just ask these lily-livered cowards when, exactly, trying to lay low and mollify a bully has ever resulted in a positive outcome.
But there is, in addition, a ketamine-addled elephant in the room where we’re wondering why the C.S.A.M. machine isn’t a bigger deal: Elon Musk himself. Over the past decade-plus, the South African billionaire freak has been all too happy to quite publicly leverage both his money and his formidable marketing talents not just in service of his own interests but to attack perceived and actual enemies. Many people in positions of power avoid doing or saying anything about Elon Musk for the same reason no one ever tweets anything negative about K-Pop or Taylor Swift: Any politician, publisher, or prosecutor hoping to hold him to account has to contend with the punishing experience of having Elon Musk, and his thousands of paid and unpaid flunkies, fans, and hangers-on, focus monomaniacally on you. Put bluntly: Warframe Herzog @antitractionist.bsky.social any country that tries to express an opposition to CSAM will be rewarded with musk attempting to incite a far-right terrorist coup Fri, 02 Jan 2026 19:00:05 GMT Knowing that Musk has already interfered significantly in U.K. politics--funding right-wing agitator Tommy Robinson’s legal bills, attempting to make himself a political kingmaker, threatening large donations to Nigel Farage, and acting in general as a clearinghouse for reactionary propaganda about the U.K. specifically--and you can understand why Kier Starmer might be hesitant to directly address X.com’s generative-C.S.A.M. business model. The same goes, in a general sense, in the U.S., where Republicans (like, say TAKE IT DOWN Act sponsor Ted Cruz!) might worry about Musk funding a primary opponent, or attempting to use X.com’s secondary “public communications” function to marshal opposition and harassment.
January 7, 2026 at 9:50 PM
wolmania.com
It’s imperative that you understand this is because of the Horatio Hornblower TV movies, not because of the Fantastic Four movies.
January 5, 2026 at 2:15 AM
wolmania.com
Is this supposed to make him rethink it? I feel like owning it is what he was going for.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN To Trump, on Venezuela: You Break It, You Own
January 3, 2026 at 9:33 PM
wolmania.com
Mamdani voids every executive order Eric Adams issued after being indicted/extorted by the Trump administration. The New York Times' framing:
Mamdani Revokes Executive Orders That Adams Signed to Support Israel
January 2, 2026 at 5:29 PM
wolmania.com
Losers and clowns!
December 20, 2025 at 12:43 AM
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This is... indescribable.
Dan Scavino... just looking like an absolute freak
December 17, 2025 at 1:58 AM
wolmania.com
I call these "sane eyes"
Susie Wiles, not looking like a nice lady
December 17, 2025 at 1:06 AM
wolmania.com
tfw you have nothing to hide
Hegseth Holds Back Video of Attack on Boat Strike Survivors From Full Senate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has tightly limited access to the video, but said he would play it for the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
December 16, 2025 at 7:45 PM
wolmania.com
box of Trader Joe's Turkey Corn Dogs
December 9, 2025 at 10:44 PM
wolmania.com
Respectfully,
December 5, 2025 at 8:28 PM
wolmania.com
"Stop hitting yourself"-ass administration. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/u...
A federal judge ruled last week that the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist, had been unlawfully appointed as the U.S. attorney by the Trump administration. As a result, the judge ordered the dismissal of the high-profile indictments against Mr. Comey and Ms. James. But while that decision, by Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who was brought in from a district in South Carolina to handle the question, found Ms. Halligan’s appointment invalid, it did not expressly order her removed from the office. The Justice Department has seized on the lack of explicit instruction to keep Ms. Halligan in place for now, eliciting the judges’ irritation. On Thursday morning, one judge removed Ms. Halligan’s name from a court filing and questioned the administration’s argument that she could still hold the job. Days earlier, a magistrate judge hearing a different case had raised similar concerns, according to people familiar with the exchange. Pressed to explain the Justice Department’s rationale, Nicholas Patterson, the senior prosecutor in court, said that his office had been instructed to continue using Ms. Halligan’s signature in court filings as a U.S. attorney and special attorney. He added that his colleagues had been advised to add to the filings the names of the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and Robert McBride, the top deputy in the Virginia office. “The reasoning behind that has not been provided, your honor, to the assistant United States attorneys,” Mr. Patterson said. The office has told department officials that because Judge Currie’s order did not require a specific measure to be taken, like removing Ms. Halligan, she could stay even though the judge declared her appointment invalid, the people said. In other words, the administration’s position was that since the court order did not explicitly remove Ms. Halligan from the job, she could keep it.
December 5, 2025 at 6:05 PM
wolmania.com
TripIt has existed for like 20 years and still doesn't understand the concept of a trip that goes to more than one city. Or a time that is not expressed in an extremely specific format.

Is anyone working on this product???
"Edit Trip Info Add a trip manually below or forward your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com, and we'll create the trip for you." Trip Name: (my input follows) "I am going to several cities - countries, even! - on this trip" Destination City: [You can only have one "Destination City"] Tried to write "3:30 pm" but for some reason they won't even let you omit the leading 0 so you're supposed to write "03:30 pm". Error message is "Invalid time format. hh:mm am/pm". Insanity. Tried to write "14:30" which kinda tells you all you could possibly need to know, but for some reason they can't figure out that 14:30 is in the afternoon. Interestingly, if you do write "14:30 pm" it accepts it and automatically displays "2:30 pm" so wtf are we doing here??? Error message is "Invalid time format. hh:mm am/pm".
December 2, 2025 at 9:01 PM
wolmania.com
Pritzker is wrong, but mostly reasonable newsletter.wolmania.com/friday-march...
Star Wars Movies and Television Programs, Ranked: Andor (2022) (TV) Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) The Mandalorian (2019) (TV) Rebels (2014) (TV) The Clone Wars (2008) (TV) Visions (2021) (TV) The Bad Batch (2021) (TV) Tales of the Jedi (2022) (TV) Ahsoka (2023) (TV) Resistance (2018) (TV) Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) (TV) Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008 animated film) The Book of Boba Fett (2021) (TV) Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
November 24, 2025 at 7:45 PM
wolmania.com
I wonder!
The U.S. attorney in Miami, who is running a sprawling investigation into former officials who investigated President Trump, has been granted an unusual request to convene an extra grand jury at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla. The location ensures that just one judge can oversee it: Aileen M. Cannon. That raises a question with intriguing political and legal overtones. Could Judge Cannon again end up as a key player in a Trump-centric case, this one centered not on accusations of wrongdoing by him but on whether the Russia investigation and the charges against him after he left office in 2021 amount to a conspiracy against him?
November 24, 2025 at 7:34 PM
wolmania.com
CARPRENTERS
November 24, 2025 at 2:41 AM
wolmania.com
What a joke. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/u...
The House on Wednesday voted to repeal a measure that creates a new legal avenue for senators to sue the government for at least $500,000 each if federal investigators access their phone records without notifying them. The unanimous 426-to-0 vote reflected the deep well of bipartisan fury that built up over the provision, quietly inserted by Senate Republicans into legislation to reopen the government, that blindsided senior lawmakers overseeing spending bills. But the repeal is likely to die in the Senate, where G.O.P. leaders appear intent on preserving the provision, saying that it protects their members against investigatory overreach. The measure prompted deep bipartisan opposition in the House, whose members, unlike senators, would not be eligible to be compensated by taxpayers under the new provision. "What they did is wrong," Representative Austin Scott, Republican of Georgia, said of the Senate. "This should not be in this piece of legislation, and they can say it's about good governance all they want to. When they made it retroactive, all of a sudden it was no longer about good governance. There's actually a list of people that know they will get paid as soon as this thing is signed."
November 20, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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November 19, 2025 at 5:10 PM
wolmania.com
It’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors. Indeed, even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General—who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration54—describe the DOJ Letter as “legally[] unsound,”55 “baseless,”56 “erroneous,”57 “ham-fisted,”58 and “a mess.”59
November 18, 2025 at 7:26 PM
wolmania.com
I guess Mel Gibson is the designated survivor.
Jake Sherman @JakeSherman TIGER WOODS and ELON MUSK are both expected at the TRUMP dinner for Saudi Crown Prince MBS.
November 18, 2025 at 1:11 AM
wolmania.com
Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks
November 14, 2025 at 7:02 PM
wolmania.com
No
Atlantic article headlined "The Problem With 'Moral Clarity'" by Thomas Chatterton Williams
November 13, 2025 at 3:15 PM