WCS 112: Not as if the data isn’t out there
w/: inspirational goalie Mia + Cali GOP clap-back + Zeus Tipado on T McKenna
America’s most popular anti-Trump podcasters—let’s say we’re talking Heather Cox Richardson, but it could be any number of the ad-driven commentators—are Americans who can explain in granular detail how Team Trump is using obscure, 18th-century law do its latest loophole stunt. They can break down crypto for the layperson.
The increasingly-dubious Michael Wolff claims the ability to broadcast from inside the President’s head.
Yet, when these designated thought leaders get to domestic racial animus—the verifiable engine of DJT’s 2025 business enterprise—every single one of these “experts” morphs into a stammering, incoherent purveyor of yada-yadaism. The tell-tale pauses before saying “Black” and “Brown” step up. Comparatively, the white pride analysis goes perfunctory.
Just to make it clear that I’m not picking on Cox Richardson, let’s say that the offender is the equally useful Taylor Lorenz, heard here discussing the White nationalist icon Sydney Sweeney.
The operative euphemism for white supremacy tends to be “Weird.” Another fuzzy Gen Y stand-in for real talk on unabashed racism is “strange.” Soft sell, either way.
Do these figures maintain popularity because they don’t go there, opting not to touch the so-called third rail? Take it from one who’s been pee-in-the-conversational-bunch-bowl guy far too much, delving into the intricate quirks of racial ambivalence can be scary, edgy business. It’s especially uncomfortable for “experts” who aren’t of color to engage meaningfully, as the dynamic at work is one which the relatively misunderstand.
Bonafide white man
gets the necessity of plain talk, for what that’s worth. Though—if you’re American—chances are that their worth to you is not much.This week in Oregon gorgeousness
Here are Wednesday’s aurora borealis, viewed from Trillium Lake, courtesy of Andrew Sambuceto.
10 Miguel: It’s never too late to be mixed
R&B star Miguel never shied away from his Latin heritage, but the need to lean into that never presented itself as it has in 2025. His brand-new song collection CAOS reflects the trying nature of these times and features mucho Spanish lyricism.
LA Taco
Before,” the multi-platinum artist said, “I wanted to do the big song, be on all of the big stages, all of that. Now I just want to connect with my people.”
Multi-ethnicity aside, CAOS’s only guest performer is funk immortal George Clinton, an R&B safe bet.
Lil Hit
The former chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin College has a a top-flight Zohran Mamdani media story, for your entertainment pleasure.
Lit Hub
9 The Huskies are playing for Mia Hamant
The story behind today’s Husky Soccer Stadium match-up against Montana is a tear-jerker. So, brace yourself.
Mia Hamant was one of the great girls team talents in the recent history of Bay Area high school sports. U-Dub gave her a scholarship after that, and last year she became the starting goalie.
The future of the team was undeniably bright. Then, Hamant’s teammates and coaches found themselves willing their way to a league co-championship, minus their talented new Californian, who was wasting away. On November 6, Hamant, 21, died from Stage 4 kidney cancer.
Canzano writes: “I don’t know if you follow women’s college soccer, but this Washington team played like it was on a mission this season. Coaches will tell you the workouts were grueling and the locker room was tight. The Huskies were unselfish and fierce on the field. They seized opportunities, maybe because they were keenly aware of how fleeting they are.“
Lil Hit
It’s lovely that Eddie Murphy fit the character Paul Mooney into the closing moments of his cagey-yet-entertaining new doc.
Netflix
The Full Herb Caen
A byproduct of being willing to lie about anything is that, while campaigning, you might say you’ll release the Epstein files, thereby sentencing yourself to political death by one million paper cuts…
Epstein’s political life, btw, is at least as big a spectacle as his criminal life….
Drew Brees will be replacing the scandalized Mark Sanchez as Fox‘s third-tier NFL analyst…
Wonder exactly how small the next broadcast gig might be next for the scandalized Orange County boy, this being Trump time…
I would recommend reality TV…
The very idea that Luka Dončić could be traded from Dallas for just about any NBA Negro made me suspect that that Nico Harrison is from Canada…
Turns out that dude was born in Seattle and graduated from high school in Tigard, Oregon…
Ahem…
8 Has Oregon opened the door to going nuclear?
Because of less-than transparent data center demands, Oregon is possibly growing “nuclear curious.” For now the state remains “nuclear cautious.” At least, that’s what the 25-year Oregon Energy Strategy—released on Wednesday—will have us believe.
Consider Amazon’s eyebrow-raising complaint against PacifiCorps, for the language is worth noting.
Capital Chronicle
With more data centers apparently inevitable, the challenge will be meeting energy demands while meeting stated carbon emission goals.
New nuclear plants have been outlawed since voters approved a ballot measure in 1980. The state’s only nuclear plant closed down in 1993.
Lil Hit
The Washington Hospitality Association just put out its 2025 Cost of Dining report. Turns out that the Evergreen State is the most expensive for eating out in the lower 48, with chain-restaurant menu prices an insane 13.6 percent above the US average. I blame Amazon.
The Bellingham Herald
An active time for SEAF
Earlier this year WCS podcast listeners met Sophia Skyy, my friend behind the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. On Sunday, SEAF will hold a silent auction, “clearing space in the Pan Eros Foundation’s vault.” In other SEAF news, the festival’s call for interactive art ends on December 15.
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7 How Fox News built its Portland lie
From our souls on out we knew that Fox News was lying about riots in Portland. Some of us could simply step outside and have their reality verified. Sometimes, however, knowing intrinsically is not enough.
Fortunately, Propublica sent the hearty soul Rob Davis to reconstruct the crime scene, so as to show us all of the dirty details.
Propublica
Of one especially misleading sequence, Davis writes, “[t]he accompanying image appears to be not from the ICE building but from the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, more than a mile away. A nearly identical scene was shown in a Fox News video five years earlier. Footage that aired Sept. 4, shot at a slightly different angle, blurs out spots where graffiti was visible on the building in Fox’s July 2020 broadcast…. Almost immediately after showing the courthouse scene, the segment cuts to another image as the correspondent says, ‘federal police used tear gas and flashbangs.’”
Lil Hit
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is the world’s fastest woman in both the 400-meter dash and the 400-meter hurdles, but a scheduling conflict will prohibit her from fulfilling a rare double-double next summer in LA.
XPFSN / X
Sure the dances are fun, but how much are they helping?
I see online accounts asking, and I’m inclined to wonder, too. For sure, it keeps tempers from flaring, and the value of that isn’t small.
6 Any political movement represented by Rob Schneider bleeds credibility
Two UC Berkeley Daily Californian reporters have provided an hour-by-hour account of the upheaval that broke out on the last stop on Turning Point’s “American Comeback Tour.” The Charlie Kirk crowd was notable in that they were aged.
Cal Matters
At 8:45 pm, “Protesters circled Lower Sproul to block exits, facing off with police behind barricades as attendees left the event. Surrounded by protesters, attendees gradually exited, some yelling back and engaging in arguments. The protest wrapped up a little after 9:30 p.m. By the end of the protest, four people had been arrested.”
Meanwhile, a Sacramento woman was also charged for her role in a previous Turning Point conflict. Joanna Sodke was arraigned Friday and charged with conspiring to riot at an April UC Davis event.
Lil Hit
I am in the tank for this journo right here. Having to hold back in 2025 would be hell. So, the idea of getting fired as a badge of honor is elementary to me.
Baby, Caen I hold you?
The volume of people boarding city busses with bags of recycling is definitely a low-end economic indicator…
Tomorrow is the Northwest Trail Alliance’s “Dig Day” in Tillamook. The focus is expected to be on maintaining shared-use trails.
Simply coming back from cancellation helped make Hollywood businessman James Kimmel a top-tier figure in popular culture…
Watching dude power through the tears to explain what his dead friend Cleto meant to him was unique media…
Almost too personal…
On Tuesday, at the Westside LA Fox studio, Rupert Murdoch will hold its inaugural soirée for advertisers who want to be in the California Post, the New York Post’s new West Coast sibling…
5 Pin hundreds of thousands of deaths on Elon Musk
When the unelected racist who runs Tesla cut American foreign aid last winter, 40 percent of the planet’s humanitarian support disappeared. The impacts have been as bad as anticipated.
“Billionaire wealth and the decimation of lifesaving aid” dropped on Monday, featuring reporting that asks the favor of, “travel[ing] with us around the world to bear witness to the impact of these funding cuts on people’s lives and livelihoods.”
OxFam / The New Yorker
War-torn Congo lost 70 percent of its USAID funding in Musk’s heartless hacking. About 27 million are experiencing food insecurity. Rape is rampant.
Approximately 8,200 Congo citizens living with AIDS have lost access to their antiviral medications. Death from cholera is up 60 percent.
The 22-minute documentary “Rovina’s Choice” shows how hundreds of thousands have died due to the billionaire’s awful disregard.
Lil Hit
We’re 10 presidents into American drug wars in Latin America, and this Whites House has been the most ingeniously vicious.
In These Times
Describing Elon
One of my all-time favorite writers made Musk’s ears burn this week. I’m not much on X, but I sure found a way to laugh.
4 Why right-wing influencers make bigger bucks
Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichick charges $250,000 for “vague social media consulting services.” Smart & Safe Florida—a weed legalization PAC—paid conservative influencer DC_Draino $164,000 for a couple of Instagram posts. Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, and Dave Rubin were paid millions prior to the 2024 election.
Good work if you can get it, and if you’re not a MAGA Republican you almost certainly cannot get it. This schism came to my attention via
UserMag / Reuters DC_
Advantaging tech and ownership shifts, the influencers have worked with Trump officials to become a powerful force in a widening the retribution campaign against perceived enemies of the totalitarian administration.
“This tsunami of money on the right has allowed a new class of corporate centrist Democrats to fleece liberal donors out of millions of dollars for nonsensical schemes to ‘create the left Joe Rogan,” Lorenz writes.
Lil Hit
The Nib editors Shay Mirk and Eleri Harris have published Making Non-Fiction Comics, an ethical guide for a still-emerging field.
Portland Mercury
Zeus and McKenna on Terence McKenna
Wondering what those gains made while tripping are for, exactly? Yes? Then watch and listen as Zeus Tipado—in his own inimitable way—frames this banger from the psychedelic philosopher.
3 A WH flirting with ‘dummymander’ turf
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