[Paul Manafort ] has no choice but to plead guilty. That’s what the indictment says to me… The only defense that you’ve got is to go in there and start singing like a canary to avoid jail time. And once he starts singing, one of the tunes is bound to be Donald Trump.’

– Nick Akerman, a former assistant special Watergate prosecutor as quoted by The Washington Post

More evidence that Facebook is the preferred social media network for colluding with Russians to steal elections.

Drew Magary for Deadspin:

We are all, as a country, being forced to reckon with bad men who are unwilling to reckon with themselves. There’s a bad man in charge, and bad men in the government running amok at his behest, and other bad men who are currently either indulging in their abuses or being exposed for them. There are too many men out there who think if they can’t be bad men, they can’t be men at all. You see this in the language of the alt-right. Liberal men are pussies. Losers. Cucks. Considering the feelings of others is for hippies and eunuchs.

But that’s a huge lie, maybe the worst lie. You can be a red-blooded, beer-drinking American man who is also not a fuckhead.

Drew Magary for Deadspin:

We are all, as a country, being forced to reckon with bad men who are unwilling to reckon with themselves. There’s a bad man in charge, and bad men in the government running amok at his behest, and other bad men who are currently either indulging in their abuses or being exposed for them. There are too many men out there who think if they can’t be bad men, they can’t be men at all. You see this in the language of the alt-right. Liberal men are pussies. Losers. Cucks. Considering the feelings of others is for hippies and eunuchs.

But that’s a huge lie, maybe the worst lie. You can be a red-blooded, beer-drinking American man who is also not a fuckhead.

Drew Magary for Deadspin:

We are all, as a country, being forced to reckon with bad men who are unwilling to reckon with themselves. There’s a bad man in charge, and bad men in the government running amok at his behest, and other bad men who are currently either indulging in their abuses or being exposed for them. There are too many men out there who think if they can’t be bad men, they can’t be men at all. You see this in the language of the alt-right. Liberal men are pussies. Losers. Cucks. Considering the feelings of others is for hippies and eunuchs.

But that’s a huge lie, maybe the worst lie. You can be a red-blooded, beer-drinking American man who is also not a fuckhead.

Prada wants what Hollywood’s having.

In addition to the work of Brigid Elva, Jöelle Jones, Stellar Leuna, Giuliana Maldini, Natsume Ono, Emma Rios, Trina Robbins and Fiona Staples — which spans from manga to punk to sci-fi — Prada also delved into the archives of Tarpé Mills this season, the creator of the first female action-hero, Miss Fury.

Via BKV, letters column, Saga #48.

Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has dramatically announced his decision not to seek reelection to his Senate seat in 2018:

None of this is normal. And what do we, as United States senators, have to say about it? The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding, are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics because politics can make us silent when we should speak and silence can equal complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to.

The account, @Crystal1Johnson, tweeted mostly positive and encouraging stories, but then would occasionally tweet “inflammatory stories about Hillary Clinton,” the Beast reports. This played into the method of other Russian propaganda accounts, in which they would build an audience with shareable content, and were then “weaponized for divisive political messages.”

Do strategies like this actually persuade and/or (de-) mobilize voters?

Zat Rana For Quartz:

You are what you read. The information that you input into your mind informs your thinking patterns, and it influences your output in the form of the decisions you make, the work you produce, and the interactions you have.

That’s a huge incentive to prioritize a block of time to think about what and how you consume, and whether or not you read adequately relative to the progress you want to make. It’s a reason to maybe pause and consider if you can do anything to purposefully shape the direction of your mind.

Suggestion: the news media slide away from text and into video on the slippery slopes of YouTube and Facebook is not good.