Helen Shin
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h-x-s.bsky.social
Helen Shin
@h-x-s.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.2K following 470 posts
She/her.
Formerly @H_X_S on Twitter.
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h-x-s.bsky.social
THANK YOU for reminding me to say that I finally got your gorgeous drawing framed...
Natee Himmapaan's drawing of Godzilla & King Kong taking tea. King Kong says, "What is all this agitation? Are the summer gloves come in?" Godzilla replies, "Why, an invitation, to be sure! To Mothra's garden party!"
November 5, 2025 at 5:49 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Just voted early in NYC - for Mamdani!
Photo of voter with "I voted early!" sticker on mask
October 26, 2025 at 3:16 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Waitong for the curtain... and for Keanu... and for Alex...
At the Hudson Theater with my Playbill for "Waiting for Godot", starring Keanu Reeves & Alex Winter
October 14, 2025 at 10:53 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Outside the Met - seeing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay this afternoon!
Photo outside the Metropolitan Opera showing a banner for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
October 11, 2025 at 6:38 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
We. Are. At. War.

"You don't get to decide when you're in a fight. If someone punches you in the face, you're in one. We're in one."

"Freedom. Equality. Democracy. I don't really care how well these poll. They're the truth. That truth is worth fighting for."
Peacetime breeds rule-followers. In war the rules go out the window. The old certainties become terrifyingly malleable. You are assailed on all sides by phantasms: and it takes a particular kind of moral courage to see your way through, take the initiative, and make the enemy more afraid of you than you are of him. War demands ratcatchers. Republicans understand this clearly. MAGA has declared their intention to use a muscular assertion of presidential power to relitigate the fundamental principles of the republic, from the nature of checks and balances to the fundamental questions of citizenship, and to do so in the public and cultural arena They call this regime politics, and they are waging it on every front. They aren't worried about what the old rules of politics say. They have heard the footsteps of the Lord of Hosts marching through history, and they understand that the rules can be changed. They are exercising every lever of power available to them to do so: legal, institutional, cultural, financial. To them there are no "silos." Accusations of antisemitism are leveraged against Harvard in the cultural arena, even as federal control over research grants is leveraged to squeeze Harvard in the financial arena, all in order to extract affirmative action for conservatives in Harvard hiring and admissions. To conservatives these are not three separate silos "media engagement" "federal research policy" "undergraduate admissions," but a single war waged on many fronts—an attempt to change the meaning of who is American. When I look at progressive politics today I see a community consumed by fear. A certain kind of Democratic politician is desperate to see who they can throw under the bus to guarantee their electoral success—which blood sacrifice they can make to Mammon to preserve their own hide. They style themselves bold truth-tellers, but the fear has consumed them. Meanwhile, the progressive hordes on social media are positively consumed by fear. They are addicted to it. The easiest way to go viral on Bluesky is to post a link to some current event, plus some commentary about how this is the end of trans rights, or Trump's final consolidation of absolute power, or proof that the Democrats are about to throw us under the bus. This is the thing: dooming is itself a liberation from the burden of choice. If everything is ruined forever, if your allies have already forsaken you, if the battle is already lost, you aren't responsible for your choices. They can't affect the outcome. You're free. Dooming is another escape from the burden of war mindset. Clausewitz knew this as well: "As a rule, most men would rather believe bad news than good," (I.6). Today we progressives are eating each other alive from lack of trust. The base does not trust politicians to have their backs. Politicians do not trust their base to support them in the face of any friction. Different factions of the party eye each other warily, waiting to get sold out. Labor unions crow about tariffs and anti-immigrant raids; California's governor blathers about trans kids; the hordes of Bluesky tear down Sarah McBride any chance they get. Contrast MAGA. During the campaign Trump made all kinds of moderate noises. And his base trusted him to nevertheless carry the MAGA standard into office, no matter what gestures he had to make to get elected. Much the same could be said of Barack Obama, who was beloved and trusted by the Democratic base, even as he explicitly came out against gay marriage. We all knew he didn't really mean it. Most of all, war mindset requires strategic clarity. Trust is built on shared values. Moral courage springs from genuine conviction founded on sound principles. You will not find such conviction nor such principles in the latest polling. Morality is not a popularity contest. So where are they to be found? One can do worse than that old American gospel: we are all created equal. We are endowed with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Freedom. Equality. Democracy. I don't really care how well these poll. They're the truth. That truth is worth fighting for. The future direction of the Democratic Party has been much contested. Some have argued that it requires changes to the policy platform. Maybe we need to abandon trans, or woke, or embrace pro-life candidates. Others have argued that it is more a question of temperament: we need fighters. The latter is correct. We—progressive politicians, progressive thinkers, progressive voters—must embrace war mindset. War mindset is not a mindset of mindless aggression, leaping after every set of jangling keys. War mindset means knowing that even if the rules have gone out the window, your principles remain. War mindset means accepting the possibility of failure and continuing despite that. War mindset means trusting each other that we're all in this fight together. War mindset means learning to be calm and ferocious at once. The fundamental rules and norms of American politics are no longer the unquestioned structure of politics, but themselves objects of political contestation. It is sometimes said that this means the end of normal politics. In the grand sweep of the liberal project, this is exactly backwards. Liberalism was born in revolution against an established order. The ground rules themselves are the most natural object of political struggle. We must regain a sense of what it means to fight for our preferred vision of a free and equal world in the full scope of political struggle, not the artificially straitened politics of the Long '90s.
October 4, 2025 at 1:27 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
“Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"
Photo of Josep Maria García, as the meme “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point".
September 18, 2025 at 9:35 AM
h-x-s.bsky.social
"Mamdani's 12-point win was so decisive that he didn't actually need any vote transfers to defeat Cuomo (his first round votes were more than Cuomo's final round vote tally)"
And the verdict is in: The DREAM (Don't Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor) strategy looks like it worked. A whopping 54 percent of voters didn't put Cuomo on their ballots in the first place. And by the time the election had come down to the final four candidates—Mamdani, Cuomo, Lander, and Adrienne Adams—Lander and Adams's eliminations benefitted Mamdani, while Cuomo fell even further behind. When Adrienne Adams, who did not explicitly endorse Mamdani, was eliminated, 31 percent of her votes were handed over to Lander, while 24 percent went to Cuomo and 22 percent went to Mamdani. (Twenty-three percent of her ballots, meanwhile, were "exhausted" and didn't make it to the final round, as those voters didn't rank Lander, Cuomo, or Mamdani.) When it came to Lander's votes when he was eliminated, the results were even more stark—56 percent of his votes went to Mamdani, 23 percent were exhausted, and just 21 percent went to Cuomo. (DREAM, indeed.)
July 23, 2025 at 3:10 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
The classic Brontësaurus by @himmapaan.bsky.social from 2014:
Drawn by Natee (@himmapaan.bsky.social): A Brontosaurus in a late 1830s dress and a lace cap stands at a writing desk with a quill pen in one hand. In the background, a small oval frame with a miniature silhouette portrait of another brontosaur hangs on the wall. Sepia ink on Strathmore grey-toned paper with white gouache highlights.
July 14, 2025 at 9:31 AM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Age verification? My first computer was a TRS-80 with magnetic tape drive for memory...
July 11, 2025 at 12:32 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
A lovely interview with @georgetakei.bsky.social share.inquirer.com/WSPjbq (gift link)
“I believe so much of life is cyclical,” said Takei, referring to the historical echo between the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s and the detentions and deportations currently being carried out by the Trump administration. “The Latino community in not only Los Angeles but throughout the country — their lives are in absolute chaos, defined by fear and terror, and that’s what it was like for my parents.” Takei says his life was shaped by his childhood imprisonment. “It’s a shameful history. It’s a history of the weakness, the vulnerability, the fragility of our democracy. I want all Americans to know our American history.” “On Star Trek, we had this acronym — IDIC, which stands for ‘infinite diversity in infinite combinations’ — working together, and you saw that personified in the characters. We saw that diversity. Captain Kirk was a white North American, but he wasn’t an American. He [actor William Shatner] was a French Canadian from Montreal. The second in command was a half alien — his father was a Vulcan and his mother was an Earthling. We had a Scottish engineer. At the height of the Cold War, we had a character, Chekov, who spoke with a Russian accent. That’s optimism.” He points out that the show was conceived and produced in the 1960s, “another turbulent time, and so, infinite diversity in infinite combinations, that diversity coming together, working together to face a common challenge, [is how] we move forward. “That’s going to help us overcome some of these seemingly insuperable differences.”
June 24, 2025 at 1:11 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
"Substack does not have a clear future as a newsletter business, I'm not the first to notice that. But it doesn’t have to fail outright to be a disaster. It just has to keep trying to become a life-sized map of the internet: maximum content, maximum churn."
"There are a lot of red flags in that short history, including that pretty steep drop-off from a rumored 10-figure valuation in 2022 to handing around the hat at the office in 2023. Malik’s interest is an even brighter warning flare. According to Newcomer, Substack is bringing in about $45M in "annualized revenue"—or their 10 percent cut of the $450M subscribers pay Substack authors. As Byers points out, a $700M valuation would demand Substack’s founders convince investors of a 16x multiple: the kind of math that makes sense for a software company but not a media company." "Everything suspect about Substack stems from a desire to be more like a sticky destination and less like a publisher. You can ignore their posturing about free speech and just look at how they’re leaning harder and harder into audience capture and engagement. They’re offering audio, video, short-form posts, “discoverability.” They want to keep readers in their app listening, watching, interacting—anything but reading newsletters in their inbox as God intended. Indeed, Substack is now hunting bigger game than any legacy media creature. In January, they announced a $20M “creator accelerator fund” to lure Tiktokers (or anyone else with at least $2000/mo in existing subscribers). That’s almost half their revenue on a bet that gets them further and further away from a sanctuary for outcycled journalists and closer and closer to the chaos chum bucket that newsletters were supposed to stand out from." "Right now, Substack is independent of the political pressures that might have pushed ABC to let Terry Moran go. But it’s utterly dependent on the whims of its investors. Every round of capital deepens the expectation of a big payoff. Substack doesn’t need to be sustainable to survive. It just needs to be buyable. Say Substack as a newsletter platform limps along long enough for its founders to get desperate. Then someone with deep pockets—someone interested in culture war influence—decides it has value as a personal ideological playpen. Elon Musk expressed interest in buying the company in 2023. Malik has already invested. Imagine the enshittification of Twitter, but with thousands of journalists locked in because that’s how they hoped to make a living, not just fuck around micro-blogging on company time."
June 24, 2025 at 10:48 AM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Am reminded of this classic:
Meme of "tech enthusiasts" v "programmers/engineers"
June 11, 2025 at 10:43 AM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Here's a screenshot of the story from @garius.bsky.social:
Taken from John Bull @garius.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/garius.bsky.social In 1994 the Pet Shop Boys were invited to perform 'Go West' at the Brit Awards. They agreed and brought with them 3 separate choirs of miners. Some of those miners had marched with the gay and lesbian members of LGSM in the 1980s. It is one of the great, near-lost music moments Other members of the colliery choirs said that they didn't know who the Pet Shop Boys were when they performed, but after they had relatives and friends (and remember these guys were from small-town Wales and England) come out to them, and say seeing them on that stage meant the trusted them. I know this, because in the early 2000s I wrote a piece for a magazine on it. Now sadly lost to time. I got to speak to some of those old miners who were legit in tears about how being on that stage meant friends told them they were gay. And how it changed their worldview. I cried writing it, too. There used to be a better video on YouTube. It's gone now. I assume the actual footage exists in an archive somewhere, but it's probably been forgotten. It was a passing moment. But also one that I know changed a lot of lives, in a big way, in small towns. It really should be better known. And it reminded me of a forgotten time when that version of the song turned out to really, really matter to a bunch of people who never expected it to. (Should say that Pet Shop Boys Go West has been one of my favourite songs ever since just because of this performance. And i teared up even writing this stupid little thread about it at the memory of those convos. One of the life moments that shifted me away from a path to internet Edgelord-ness)
June 6, 2025 at 8:12 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Ugh.
Image of a garbage truck labeled "Whole Man Disposal Services", with stick-figure men spilling out of the back of the truck, and captioned: "Yes, the entire man."
June 6, 2025 at 7:41 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
A quote from the James Bond novel "Goldfinger" by Ian Fleming: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action"
May 8, 2025 at 4:02 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Lovely Q&A with Désiré Mia and Mario D'Leon after the NYC showing of "Absolute Dominion"!
Actors Mario D'Leon and Désiré Mia at a talkback (Q&A) after tonight's NYC screening of "Absolute Dominion" (written & directed by Lexi Alexander)
May 8, 2025 at 2:43 AM
h-x-s.bsky.social
A tardigrade plays a tiny, tiny violin
May 1, 2025 at 2:45 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
"...it doesn’t matter if there are safe and useful ways to use [LLMs] or other generative models. We have dismantled our safeguards. They represent central control by tech companies over core parts of our culture and economy and there aren’t any checks on their misbehaviour or abuses."
Post-war US has always siphoned off the best and the brightest of its allied countries. They come to study at their universities and stay and further the US economy and academia. This is almost certainly over. Considering that our institutions never recovered from mere cutbacks during the austerity era, it’s outright impossible for US institutions to ever recover from the destruction being wrought against them today. What this means is it doesn’t matter if there are safe and useful ways to use large language models or other generative models. We have dismantled our safeguards. They represent central control by tech companies over core parts of our culture and economy and there aren’t any checks on their misbehaviour or abuses. We can’t trust, as individuals, that they can be safely adopted because the institutions supposed to ensure that safety effectively no longer exist. This means that we’re in the situation where US and European companies are likely to suffer when trying to adopt generative models for automation – chaotic, mismanaged, and misbehaving tech behemoths like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, or Google exacerbate the risks of the technology while at the same time compromising the (still) hypothetical benefits. But companies outside of the US’s immediate sphere of influence are in a very different position. If there are to be non-hypothetical large-scale productivity benefits to the technology, companies based in countries with still-functioning and still-trusted institutions are much more likely to be able to adopt it safely. The same applies to pretty much any productivity innovation you can think of. The same technology might result in a -10% decline in productivity in a “western” company – because of the unfettered chaotic and extractive behaviour of the “innovator” – might result in a +10% improvement in a company based in states with functional institutions. To use a food safety analogy: Promoting the drinking of milk should, in theory, improve public health. Calcium strengthens bones which benefits both the young and the elderly. But if you can’t vouch for the safety of the milk – if you can’t be sure that it isn’t adulterated with something harmful or that it hasn’t been contaminated with a bacteria – then the more people drink milk, the more people die. Same action; opposite results.
April 24, 2025 at 11:02 AM
h-x-s.bsky.social
I originally bought (& wore) this shirt during GWB’s presidency, pulled it out again when DJT was elected the 1st time, and despondently dug around for it again this past November: https://www.cafepress.com/shopdetail/americanapology.627155236
In the UN’s 6 official languages, the back of the “American Traveler International Apology Shirt” says: I’m sorry my president’s an idiot. I didn’t vote for him.
April 20, 2025 at 5:10 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Bill, sweetie, why are you copying other people's posts? Off you pop! bsky.app/profile/ianb... cc: @aetiology.bsky.social
Bluesky post by @ianboudreau.com that Bill (cardude.bsky.social) has copied verbatim and is pretending is his own post.
April 3, 2025 at 3:11 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
As originated in the classic Wondermark cartoon: wondermark.com/c/1062/
Wondermark cartoon by David Malki - origin of "sealion" meme
March 27, 2025 at 8:47 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
I'm going to remind everyone (h/t @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social) that even Trump's own lawyers testified under oath they met with him in pairs because Trump lies so much:
x.com/nycsouthpaw/...
Oct. 6, 2016 tweet from @nycsouthpaw saying: "In depo[sition] for Trump Plaza bankruptcy case, Trump's own lawyer testifies they often met with him in pairs because Trump lies so much."
March 27, 2025 at 12:12 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Argh.
Abington School District v Schempp, you motherfuckers!
supreme.justia.com/cases/federa...
The Supreme Court opinion in the 1963 case "Abington School District v. Schempp" holds that the First Amendment prohibits public schools from sponsoring Bible readings or recitations of the Lord's Prayer
February 10, 2025 at 8:27 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
Eagles-themed sourdough from our local Breads Bakery. Thanks for treating me to it, Cathy! #FlyEaglesFly
Crusty round loaf of sourdough bread stenciled with the Eagles football team logo
February 9, 2025 at 4:18 PM
h-x-s.bsky.social
It's the classic "And then a miracle occurs..." - Sidney Harris was SO right!
Cartoon with a scientist pointing at a spot in an equation on a chalk board that reads "Then a miracle occurs" - and saying to the other, "I think you should be more explicit here in step two".
January 24, 2025 at 3:42 PM