Today we bid adieu to Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Crossfit psycho who bewitched America with her homemade stew of Qanon zingers and blood libel. In her waning (?) days, she somehow became a member of the anti-Trump Resistance and spoke out against the skyrocketing cost of living and mindless foreign wars. How did we get here?

Well, Trump bragged recently that he got us out of eight wars and about to be another, seemingly mangling his train of thought and syntax about his intentions to invade Venezuela. How can you get out of a war, a reasonable person might ask, without getting into one? Just think about it. Think.

It has been an odd few weeks for the team here at Tropics of Meta. While the U.S. still circles the drain of authoritarianism, red shoots of optimism have sprouted up. (Ask Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza if they ever met a mixed metaphor they didn’t like.) There’s Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of a city the size of about fourteen-and-a-half Wyomings, and a political talent of seemingly inexhaustible charm. In Atlanta, voters elected Kelsea Bond, a dedicated DSA activist, to its city council. It almost feels like the Progressive Era old days, when a socialist could become mayor of Milwaukee. But we, fair citizens, are hunting bigger game.

There has been a lot of media buzzing and punditry about Trump reaching his dusk time, when his political pull is not what it used to be. Semi-sane members of Congress and other elected officials realize that the big guy won’t be around forever, and they might have some self-interest in opposing whatever nervous tics spring out of his Filet-o-Fish-muddled mind. Of course, this turn is cynical in the utmost. Courage might come last, but we’re happy to give it a seat at the table.

American politics and culture have been stuck in a tug-of-war for years now, with each side maneuvering for a marginal pop of advantage. Where we go from here is impossible to predict. However, if the equally impossible bubble of crypto and AI is any indication, things will get real interesting, real soon.

In any case, this is the news from Batavia, Ohio. Here is our editors’ roundup of must-read recommendations from across the web:

• New York City just elected Zohran Mamdani. What now? (Al Jazeera)
• NYC Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani sticks to his socialist guns in fire-breathing victory speech (NY Post)
• Trump praises NYC Mayor-elect Mamdani after White House meeting, shrugs off being called ‘fascist’ (Politico)
• Legendary friend-of-the-blog Molly Lambert on the Golden Age of Porn Valley (LARB)
• ‘Bugonia’: An Intimate Portrait of Humanity at Its Worst (Atlantic)
• Our political moment is ripe for David Cronenberg’s body horror (Aeon Essays)
• How “Cuckoo’s Nest” Sparked the Disability Rights Movement— with Dr. Steven Noll (Craig Patrick Reports)
• Patti Smith’s Lifetime of Reinvention (Atlantic)
• Selling Zohran (Defector)
• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Shitty Life (The Drift)
• One app, 60 men, 26 dates: my adventures in alt-right dating (Cosmo)
• I didn’t know that was something a person could do (i.e. the Andrew formerly known as Prince)
• Why Is the Drug Kingpin Daniel Kinahan Living Large in Dubai? (New Yorker)
• The cycling of phosphorus is the basis for all life on Earth (Aeon Essays)
• Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI (Defector)
• Vanuatu council repeals law banning menstruating women from selling food (ABC)
• Democrats flip two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission (Georgia Recorder)
• Booker, Boozman to speak with David Sacks as Senate Ag nears draft crypto deal (Politico)
• New Levels of Corruption Feared as Trump Family Adds Gambling Business Atop of Crypto Grift (Common Dreams)
• SNAP benefits: Trump admin seeks emergency block on order to pay food stamps in full (CNBC)
• Lengendary historian Joan Scott on “A General Air of Anxiety” and the echoes of McCarthyism (Boston Review)
• The Democratic Party’s Tea Party Moment Has Begun (Ettingermentum)
• The Conservatives Who Think Trump Isn’t Going Far Enough (Boston Review)
• New reading laws sweep the nation following Sold a Story (American Public Media)
• California Republicans retreat as anti-Prop 50 campaign collapses (Politico)
• Everything Looks Perfect from Far Away – an essay on “Peak Indie” (Erik D. Harvey)
• How do the pros get someone to leave a cult? Manipulate them into thinking it was their idea (The Guardian)
• The Subversive Hyperlink (Jim Nielsen)
• Dead Capitalism Theory (SCP Foundation)
• AI in Americans’ lives: Awareness, experiences and attitudes (Pew Research)
• Patricia Williams: When AI Speaks for the Dead (Yale Review)
• Peter Thiel Gets Out of Dodge (Broligarchy)
• A Hidden Order of Reality – On Saussure and Structuralism (Boston Review)
• Record Numbers of Younger Women Want to Leave the U.S. (Gallup)
• There Are No Weird Blogs Anymore Cause It’s More Fruitful to Drive Them Out of Business (TPM)
• A glimpse of daily life for people in isolated, war-torn Myanmar (Aeon Videos)
• James Watson: From DNA pioneer to untouchable pariah (STAT)
• Historic Collaboration Suggests “Ghost Particles” Could Explain All of Existence (The Debrief)
• These Sandhill Cranes Have Adopted a Canada Gosling, and Birders Have Flocked to Watch the Strange Family (Smithsonian)