America's working class deserves better

'It's humiliating!'

'Freedom for fucking Palestine!'

'The left will find a way to paint Trump as an evil villain'

'Lamest response'

His booking agent is asking for prayers

News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: The Talamasca vs. Pennywise Plus: A (not so brief) history of fantasy currency, too many new books, and A House of Dynamite. By Molly Templeton | Published on October 24, 2025 Images: HBO and AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Images: HBO and AMC As I type this, late Wednesday morning, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley has been holding the Senate floor for more than 18 hours. As CNN noted, “Senate rules do not permit lawmakers to take bathroom breaks or sit down without yielding their time.” He has been standing there, protesting the state of our country, with the help of Democratic senators from all over the country. It’s been, for me, a powerful reminder about community, cooperation, and raising one’s voice. I hope you’ll take some of that energy into your weekend. Call your reps, and take some downtime with a good book or movie (or wild article) when you can.  The End of One Story, and the Beginning of Another This has been an incredible month for books: new work from Ken Liu, Sarah Gailey, Freya Marske, Olivie Blake, Tasha Suri, Alix Harrow, and so many more. This week, though, has two novels I’m particularly excited about: The Rose Field and When They Burned the Butterfly. They almost couldn’t be more different: The Rose Field is the culmination of Philip Pullman’s stories about Lyra Belacqua, also called Lyra Silvertongue, whose adventures began in The Golden Compass all the way back in 1995. Thirty (!) years later, his second trilogy about Lyra comes to a close. The first two books were hit or miss; La Belle Sauvage is only about Lyra in that it’s about her experience as a baby, when a flood comes to Oxford and a young man saves her. The Secret Commonwealth, set twenty years later, is a difficult read, both because of the conflict between Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, and because of a weak, needless narrative choice Pullman makes near the end of the book. What all this will mean for the end, for The Rose Field, I don’t know yet. But I can’t not read a book about Lyra. When They Burned the Butterfly, on the other hand, is Wen-Yi Lee’s debut novel for adult fantasy readers (she also wrote a YA horror novel, The Dark We Know). It’s historical fantasy set in an alternate version of Singapore in the ’70s; it has incredible blurbs, including one from Nghi Vo that says, “When They Burned the Butterfly will take the breath out of your chest and replace it with fire. Wen-yi Lee has written a dark riot of a novel replete with jealous gods, human cruelty and incandescent desire.” This book is sitting next to me, taunting me, because I haven’t had time to crack it open yet. But I can’t wait. Talamasca: The Secret Order Continues Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe My memory of Anne Rice’s interconnected novels is faded and worn; I obsessively read the first four or five vampire novels, and The Witching Hour, and then drifted away. This was decades ago. And yet I’m perhaps a little too excited about Talamasca: The Secret Order, which looks like someone smashed up Buffy’s Watcher’s Council and assorted X-Files elements and then, for good measure, Torchwood, and then made yet another Interview with the Vampire spinoff out of the resulting mess. Also, Jason Schwartzman plays a rich and possibly annoying vampire! This just tracks. Talamasca will clearly connect to Interview and The Mayfair Witches—for one thing, Eric Bogosian’s Daniel Molloy shows up in the trailer—but it remains to be seen how complexly it will all fit together. It might be great, and it might be terrible, but I’m pretty certain it will be entertaining either way. (Plus, The AV Club liked it, which seems like a good sign.) Talamasca begins streaming on AMC+ on Sunday, October 26. Which is the same day (and time) that It: Welcome to Derry premieres on HBO Max, so you have options if you prefer creepy clowns and nightmare towns to secret society supernatural spy-story action. Fictional Money Can Be Stressful Too Reactor’s social media manager shared this article, which I admit I have not yet finished because it is a lot. I mean this in a good way. Earlier this year, at the delightfully named A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, Bret Devereaux went long (36 minutes estimated reading time) on fictional currency. “Collections: Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy ‘Gold’” had me cackling within minutes. Devereaux briefly details how in many fantasy settings, currency is just “gold”—generally gold coins in various denominations (or not)—and how that’s actually kind of ridiculous. He writes: “Functionally no one used gold in any amount in every-day transactions in the ancient or medieval Mediterranean (or most other places!), because a gold coin at almost any size was such an enormous monetary unit as to be unsuited to most transactions. That in turn conceals some of the sharpness of wealth and class distinctions in pre-modern society in ways that flatten and frankly ‘modernize’ these societies. And it also misunderstands the economic systems of these societies, because it doesn’t understand what sort of transactions people would even want to use money for, which further flattens and modernizes these societies.” To reiterate: I haven’t read all of this yet. It’s a lot! I am very bad at absorbing historical texts! But this is what pedantry is for and I look forward to spending some time with it. Perhaps you will too. A House of Dynamite: Put Rebecca Ferguson In Anything Stressful and I’ll Watch Kathryn Bigelow doesn’t have an entirely consistent track record. I can admit this. But when she hits, she hits. And her new film looks promising—promising in the way that I really wish I could go watch it in a theater. But it’s on Netflix, so you can watch it at home. No hard pants necessary. A House of Dynamite stars Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson—and Jared Harris and Greta Lee and Moses Ingram and Jason Clarke, among others—as the people dealing with the not-a-drill threat of a missile heading toward the US. Elba is the president (of course). Ferguson is a White House officer. The trailer contains many shots of people slowly standing up, shocked expressions on their strained faces. It looks both very serious and like the grown-up sibling of a certain stripe of ’90s movie about terrible things happening to the world (The Peacemaker? Deep Impact? Mimi Leder, I miss your films.) A House of Dynamite is in select theaters now (you lucky ducks), but will be on Netflix on October 24.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: The Talamasca vs. Pennywise appeared first on Reactor.

The military relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang will “advance nonstop,” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un pledged Friday. “The years of militant fraternity, in which a guarantee has been provided for the long-term development of the bilateral friendship at the cost of precious blood, will advance nonstop,” Kim said at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new memorial to honor the lives of North Korean soldiers who have fought with Russian troops in Moscow’s war against Ukraine.   Kim acknowledged the “families of the martyrs and the soldiers who fought in the operations for liberating Kursk” during the ceremony, also acknowledging the presence of recovered wounded soldiers and “dear Russian friend,” according to KCNA Watch, an aggregator of North Korean media. Russia lost control of portions of its Kursk region in 2024 following a surprise Ukrainian incursion. Russia claimed it fully regained the territory in April.   The U.S. confirmed in October 2024 that North Korea had sent troops to Russia, with then Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin calling the move a “serious issue.”   The bond between Russia and North Korea has been “forged at the cost of blood,” Kim said, adding that sending troops to the Kursk region a year ago “marked the beginning of a new history of militant solidarity between [North Korea] and Russia.”  “Long live the invincible [North Korea]-Russia friendship,” Kim said as he concluded his speech.   In June, The New York Times reported that North Korea was not only sending troops to Russia, but also construction workers to rebuild parts of war-torn Russia.   President Donald Trump leaves the White House on Friday night for a multistop trip to Asia. South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young says Trump and Kim “should not miss this opportunity” to meet, the Yonhap news agency of South Korea reported.   Trump and Kim met in person a number of times during Trump’s first administration, including at the Demilitarized Zone in 2019, making Trump the first sitting U.S. president to enter the buffer zone between the two Koreas. There are no formal plans for Trump and Kim to meet during Trump’s visit to Asia next week.   Trump will arrive in Malaysia on Sunday to meet with its prime minister and is scheduled to participate in a ceasefire-deal signing between Thailand and Cambodia.   Trump will then visit Japan to meet with that nation’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, before traveling to South Korea for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Trump is also scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, during which trade negotiations are expected to take center stage.   The post Military Relations Between Russia and North Korea Will ‘Advance Nonstop,’ Kim Jong Un Vows  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Democrat Jay Jones has watched his lead vanish in the race for Virginia attorney general and is now either tied or trailing Republican incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares, as fallout continues from Jones’ leaked 2022 texts fantasizing about shooting a Republican official and hoping his children died in their mother’s arms. Three new polls released this week place Miyares an average of 2.4 points ahead of Jones, according to RealClearPolling. Miyares held a 4-point lead in a Suffolk University poll, with 46.4% of respondents saying they were voting for Miyares and 42.4% voting for Jones. The poll surveyed 500 likely Virginia general election voters from Oct. 17-20. A Quantus Insights survey of 1,302 likely Virginia voters conducted Oct. 19-20 gave Miyares a 7-point lead, 49%-42%, even though 46% of those surveyed identified as Democrat compared to 40% as Republican. A Washington Post and George Mason Schar School of Policy and Government poll of registered voters conducted Oct. 16-20 had Miyares and Jones tied at 46% support.  According to RealClearPolling, Jones had been steadily leading the polls since June by an average of 6.4 points. Earlier this month, National Review made public Jones’ violent and threatening text messages directed at Virginia Republican House of Delegates Speaker Todd Gilbert. Jones suggested Gilbert should get “two bullets to the head” and hoped his children would die because people only move on policy when “they feel pain personally.” Jones’ loss of support also comes amid early October revelations of his reckless driving history. He was found to have misled the court regarding how he served his community service punishment. It was revealed that a large portion of his community service was working for his own campaign. A special prosecutor has been assigned to look into the case further. Miyares has held a steady lead since Jones’ scandal came to light. But just 11 days before Election Day, Democrat gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger continues to top her GOP opponent in polls. According to RealClearPolling, Spanberger holds an average 7.1 point lead ahead of Republican nominee Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. The post After Scandal, Virginia Democrat’s Lead Evaporates appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., made headlines this week by chastising his party’s 2024 presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, over her campaign rhetoric. “When Vice President Harris referred to President Trump as a ‘fascist,’ and I knew, absolutely, we lost the plot at that point,” Fetterman told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday.  The senator, who comes from a swing state that Trump won in the 2024 presidential election, noted that portraying the president in that way was essentially mischaracterizing the tens of millions of Americans who supported him. “If you call the president or someone like a ‘fascist,’ you are effectively calling the people who are going to vote for him [the same thing] and then they must be fascist, too … or they support fascism and those things. And that is just not true,” the Pennsylvania senator added. The senator’s comments come days after the nationwide left-wing “No Kings” protests, which featured at least one attendee publicly celebrating the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. During a Piers Morgan interview published this week, left-wing political commentator Harry Sisson dared his conservative co-panelists to cite an instance in which Harris called the president “Hitler.” “When did Kamala Harris call Donald Trump, Hitler?” Sisson asked, to which conservative commentator Isabel Brown replied: “October of 2024, Kamala Harris said on the campaign trail, ‘Donald Trump vowed to be a dictator on Day One. His former chief of staff said he wanted generals like Hitler’s. Donald Trump openly admired dictators, including Adolf Hitler.’ Last October, that was said on the campaign trail, from the Democrat nominee.”  Conservative political activist Jack Posobiec added, “So, Kamala Harris said this during the campaign, during the closing days of the campaign. It was her final campaign pitch.”  When asked during a CNN town hall in October 2024 whether she considered Trump to be a fascist, Harris replied, “Yes, I do. Yes, I do.” Fetterman’s comments critiquing Harris are just the latest remarks the senator has made where he has broken with his party over its tactics. The Pennsylvania lawmaker has also opposed his party on the federal government shutdown, which is now the second-longest in U.S. history.  In early October, Fetterman told The Daily Signal, “We shouldn’t be having this conversation. You shouldn’t be shutting our government down.” “When the Republicans were doing it, we rightly criticized them, attacked them for doing that … . Don’t shut it down. It’s fundamentally wrong,” the Pennsylvania senator added. Fetterman voted Thursday to pay active-duty military members and essential federal workers. The senator explained on the social media platform X on Wednesday.  Shut our government down and America loses.2 MILLION Pennsylvanians depend on SNAP to feed their families. For me, it’s hungry Americans over party.Paying our military over party.Paying Capitol Police and federal workers over party.I choose country over party. pic.twitter.com/JQbGkzYdw8— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) October 22, 2025 “Shut our government down and America loses. 2 MILLION Pennsylvanians depend on SNAP to feed their families. For me, it’s hungry Americans over party. Paying our military over party. Paying Capitol Police and federal workers over party. I choose country over party,” he wrote. The post Fetterman Criticizes Kamala Harris for Use of ‘Fascist’ Rhetoric Against Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.