Ken Smith

Voices interest me, and clues about the silent ones.

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

@16NewsNow This sad event took place many hundreds of miles from the homes of the people who look to WNDU for local news, I believe. Not local news, then . . .

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

David Foster Wallace about we Americans starving the part of ourselves “that is almost hungry for silence and quiet and thinking really hard about the same thing for maybe half an hour instead of thirty seconds…”

https://t.co/v86tzxpU7s

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

Stoermer: The utility of seeing America clearly

https://t.co/xRubJf42U2

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.

Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.

IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.

The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.

The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.

Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.” 

Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.

The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.

This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.

Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?

https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

After the 2016 election, Trump said that 3-4 million fraudelent votes were cast. He set up a commission to investigate. The commission faded away later. You can bet they failed to find what he claimed they would find, and as their propaganda value lapsed, so did the commission.

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

I just searched on the https://t.co/6A3aMhRCFD website for forms and how-to instructions I’m going to need AND WAS ASTONISHED to see quite a large number of dead web links there.

Dead links from one IRS page to another.

So much for professionalism in the current administration.

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

@HormoneHangover It’s inspiring to think that any field, no matter how technical or mechanical, can be enveloped in a humane cultural context that supports young people’s learning as they come into the field. Challenging, too, since sets a high standard for any field of education or training…

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

@bullmancuso I have the same experience.

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

“The good news from Hungary is that blatant corruption doesn’t have to be normalized,” writes Paul Krugman.

https://t.co/IZXniqUbiM

[Mikhail Khodorkovsky @khodorkovsky_en]

It is nearly impossible for a European to comprehend the psychological reality inside Russia. It is not just "fake news." It is a total deconstruction of reality.

Let me try to immerse you in the world Russians live in [1/9]

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

Not having to know, or, as Dave Winer puts it, becoming Good Germans. @bullmancuso

https://t.co/wg9jAHGBr0

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

“This changes everything” — translated:

“This development changes something a lot, but I won’t be more specific. I prefer the ease of canned lingo to the work of writing informatively, in detail, with precision. So, you know, this changes everything.”

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

In 2009, @DaveWiner asked, “Where is Twitter’s WordPress?” In 2026, we may be approaching a time when WordPress is Twitter’s WordPress.

https://t.co/aVrvo5OMjt

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

“The next time we go to war, the American people should have to say yes. It’s become just too easy to go to war.”

https://t.co/agdDYK6AZI

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

When he renamed DofD as DofW, he wasn’t kidding.

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

Four ways that cults end. https://t.co/tLlcoNn0Vt

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

If they create new formats where they could build with ones that already exist, they have their eyes on a silo, not on the web.

“Gratuitous incompatibility is a sign of a silo-seeker.”

https://t.co/brEhU5AJvr

[ICIJ @ICIJorg]

A study commissioned by the European Parliament recommends strengthening data protection clauses in EU laws, including identifying transnational repression as a “systemic risk” that regulated platforms are responsible for under the Digital Services Act. https://t.co/Myk6IRBtSF

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

We know the cards and letters of condolence might never be opened, never be read. No matter. If they are delivered, they speak.

[Ken Smith @KenSmith]

Turns out Executive Order 14253 has the title “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

So if you disagree with the way administration’s likes to tell some part of American history, you might be a devious liar or a dangerous maniac. Noted.

https://t.co/i1NHh29Ice