“Ultramarathon.” Have you ever encountered that word before? I never had. I hate it. I hate looking at it. I hate thinking about what it means. A plain, non-ultra marathon is already horrifying enough. The idea of running 26 miles in a single day is the stuff of nightmares, but it’s something people do voluntarily. One of those people is Death Cab For Cutie leader Ben Gibbard, a distance-running devotee who is evidently much more psychotic than I realized. An ultramarathon is any footrace longer than 26 miles, and Ben Gibbard has run a bunch of those. This past weekend, Gibbard successfully completed the Western States 100, a 100.2-mile race through the trails of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. How fucked up is that? That’s terrible.

Long before Ramy Youssef came out on stage at his June 28 show at the Beacon Theatre, a palpable buzz swept through the room. Scattered throughout the auditorium were figures of note: Youssef’s Mountainhead co-star Cory Michael Smith ran across an aisle to greet a friend, while SubwayTakes’s Kareem Rahma stood on the far end of the room holding court. Cynthia Nixon and her family sat in the middle of the orchestra, the former gubernatorial candidate and current double HBO star standing to talk with people around her. Behind me, someone whispered, “I feel like he’s gotta be here,” and immediately it was clear who he was talking about.

There was no obvious sign of New York City’s surprise Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was present, but his presence was felt nonetheless. Over the course of Youssef’s set, reminders of Mamdani’s victory and the memory that something unexpected — something possibly quite good — had happened in this city had the audience giggling and roaring in equal measure, like laughing gas was being pumped through the room. That’s why, perhaps, it was of no great surprise but no less excitement that when at the end of Youssef’s set, he spoke about two things that left him hopeful at the end of this week. Right on cue, he brought out Mamdani and the audience leapt to their feet.

Mamdani had held court at Brooklyn Steel and various mid-sized New York venues, but the near-3,000 seat Beacon reacted as though he was the main event. (Later in the evening, Mamdani would make a cameo appearance at Barclays to a crowd of more than six times that.) He ran through some of his campaign’s most salient talking points — New York should be affordable — while Youssef granted him the space to soapbox after a quick word of advice: “No islands. When they invite politicians to islands, you gotta say no,” he warned. Mamdani put his hand on his heart and agreed he would refuse any island invites.

There remained still the other thing that Youssef alluded to — the second moment that left him hopeful in the past week. He got choked up in his introduction, moved to a point of stammering reverence, before welcoming out Mahmoud Khalil, the recently released Columbia University alum and new father who’d been detained by ICE in Louisiana from March 8 until June 20 for exercising his right to free speech about the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Once again, the audience jumped to their feet, the standing ovation outlasting the love the crowd had just given Mamdani. A woman behind me repeated “oh wow,” even as everyone took their seats again, as a man with keffiyeh a few rows ahead brushed tears out of his eyes.

Though Khalil opened by promising he would not try to be funny, there was a surprising lightness to his affect, a beaming smile and warm eyes. Khalil spoke in praise of Mamdani’s campaign — “a man so principled it’s a wonder ICE hasn’t tried to arrest him,” he joked (to which Youssef told him he could do a set if he wanted) — and Youssef’s comedy crusade. “Our joy is an act of resistance,” Khalil said, saying that it was one of many things this administration wanted to take away. With his arm around Mamdani, Khalil said that Tuesday’s victory gave him hope as well, that he wanted his son to grow up in a city where a man like Mamdani could be mayor. “My hope is that your son will grow up in a city where he is free to speak,” Mamdani said. It was an undeniably emotional moment — a twofold homecoming for men who had fought hard for what they believed in the face of systems that tried and failed to hold them back. The three men — “brothers,” as Youssef called them — held each other, and took a picture in front of the crowd. The show had required participants to lock up their phones. “I know none of you can take this picture,” Youssef taunted as the three men configured themselves on stage, “so we’ll do it for you.”

Later, when the crowd poured out onto the humid streets of the Upper West Side, people chattered and murmured as the Beacon’s staff unlocked their phones. “I told you he’d be there,” a woman said to her boyfriend. “It has never felt this good to be right.”

Related

• The Best Comedy Specials of 2024
• Zohran Mamdani on Why He Won
• Motherhood Without Mahmoud Khalil

If you have wandered across Capitol Hill, Columbia City, Seward Park, or even Los Angeles, you may have spotted them — colorful, CD-studded dragon faces grinning from telephone poles, their reflective surfaces glinting in the sunlight. Emerging from the imagination of the pseudonymous Sea DragonSSS, these sculptures carry the mystery of their creator with backstories involving time travel that are as deliberately obscure as the artist himself.

The artist — who goes by Eddie after his signature dragon character — shared with CHS the story behind his decade-long journey from obscure noise musician to guerrilla sculptor, his installation mishaps, and his ambitious plans to bring his time traveling dragon universe to life through animation.

FROM FAILED MUSICIAN TO STREET ARTIST: THE UNLIKELY ORIGINS OF SEA DRAGONSSS

Long before dragons adorned Seattle’s streets, Sea DragonSSS was a struggling experimental artist.

“I started as a musician. Was playing music in the 90s, mostly noise, not very popular stuff. Got some grants along the way to put out CDs. I also was a filmmaker too. CDs and DVDs of my work, none of them sold. Well, I shouldn’t say none of them, but not very many of them.”

Faced with boxes of unsold discs, he saw an opportunity.

“About 10 years ago, 2014, just ad hoc, [I decided] to turn what I had into a mobile sculpture, only four of them in the initial batch.”

Those first four installations—near Seward Park, a dog park on Genesee, Blick Art Materials on Pine Street, and a park in South Seattle—met varying fates.

“The very first one in Seward Park stayed up quite a while. I found one by the park torn down and thrown in a dumpster with a bag of dog shit on top of it. And then the one at Blick. It was two pieces, and it looked, after about a week, that some drunk people had swung off of the lower piece and fallen and broke the thing in half.”

THE BIRTH OF EDDIE AND THE TIME-TRAVELING DRAGON MYTHOS

The early sculptures were abstract, inspired by Alexander Calder’s mobiles—but with a psychedelic twist.

“The very first ones I was going for Calder on acid, with bright colors and some reflective CDs and stuff like that on it.”

But everything changed when he installed a piece outside Dick’s Drive-In on Broadway.

” I put one up in front of the Dicks on Broadway. And I was like, oh, you know that should have a mouth and stuff like that. And so that one of the more figurative ones that I put up.”

From there, a full narrative emerged. The sculptures became characters: Eddie, the nerdy protagonist; Queen Angeline, a wise elder dragon; Prince Andy and Prince Alexander and the villainous King Dotard, who sits atop a golden throne.

“Eddie, who’s kind of the nerd. He wouldn’t really be the narrator. He’s kind of like, you’re the principal character, but he’s a time traveling dragon that can’t time travel. But then we’ve got, Queen Angeline, who’s kind of like the elder figure, who recruits a couple of these princes, Prince Andy and Prince Alexander who were bestowed time traveling capabilities to save the world from the Evil King Gotard.”

NEAR-DISASTERS AND A BROKEN ARM: THE RISKS OF STREET ART

Installing sculptures on utility poles isn’t easy — or safe.

“I wasn’t using a very good ladder. I had borrowed a, essentially a broken eight foot ladder from a friend… Got up to that very top step that says this is not a step, you know. And I’ve done that many, many times before and even gotten to my tippy toes. Probably never should have done that one, though… Lost my concentration. Fell over, and, you know, bam, hit the pavement pretty hard.”

The result? A broken arm and a stern agreement with his family.

“I had to make an agreement with my family that, you know, because they they woke up that morning at 7am to a very long text from me. ‘Hi, I’m in the ER, I’m parked in a no parking zone, if you can get here before 8am then I won’t get towed. I’m all right. I’ll probably need a ride home too.”

FROM SEATTLE TO LA: WHERE DO DRAGONS THRIVE?

While Seattle’s rain limits installations, Los Angeles has become an unexpected second home for his work.

“Seattle being the relative size that it was… I’m effectively shut down from November through March. You know, it’s just, you know, the weather just kind of puts a big damper on it. So, you know, it was opportunity in the winter to go there… LA, you’ve got lots of sun, um, they also have lots of wooden poles… it’s kind of anything goes, as far as people just throw junk around everywhere there. Putting this up is actually, you know, beautifying.”

WHAT’S NEXT? ANIMATION, MERCH, AND A PLEA TO SEATTLE

Sea DragonSSS is expanding beyond street poles. He’s animating the characters for short videos and has even formed a company to represent the work.

“I’ve done some proof of concept of animating these… we’ll introduce the characters in just short form, tick tock videos… I formed an LLC beginning of January, yeah, for the purpose to sell some merch.”

But his biggest hope? That Seattle continues to embrace his creations—legally.

“Public statements of support could be cool… if you look at Seattle Municipal Code, what I’m doing is totally legal. I’d like that that stays legal in Seattle.”

You can learn more and follow the story at seadragonsss.com.

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Twelve Mile Limit, tucked away in an unassuming residential area off Tulane Ave in Mid-City, might be the best neighborhood bar in New Orleans. It’s got all the makings of a great dive—the room is dim and bedecked with old show posters and Christmas lights, the ceilings are low, the jukebox is good, and the pool table is often covered up for nightly events. There’s a friendly, communal vibe, with mostly locals and regulars holding up the bar. It doesn’t hurt that the drinks are world-class, thanks to owner T. Cole Newton’s pedigree in the New Orleans cocktail scene.

On any given night of the week, you can find comedy open-mics, trivia nights, karaoke, and other events like Queer Craft Night, Sexy Bing-Oh, and more.

Styled as a cocktail dive bar, Twelve Mile undersells and over-delivers. Over the years, it has invested back into its neighborhood, installing solar panels and a battery storage system that decreases their carbon footprint and allows them to serve as a local charging station during power outages. They also partner with local non-profits and hold events for like-minded organizations and campaigns, and a percentage of their monthly sales supports affordable housing in their community. 

While Twelve Mile may be far off the well-worn tourist trail in the city, what it offers is far more in line with the ethos of New Orleans and what the city prides itself on—creativity, acceptance, and irreverence, and a desire to sit down with friends, throw back a few cocktails, and just have a grand old time.

feyspearl:

PRINCESS MONONOKE
1997 | Hayao Miyazaki

The data is striking:

The Supreme Court is now in open conflict with the lower courts over cases involving the Trump administration. Since May, federal district courts have ruled against the administration 94.3% of the time. The Supreme Court, however, has flipped that outcome, siding with the administration in 93.7% of its cases (15 out of 16).

District court judges, who see the evidence firsthand and hear directly from those affected, overwhelmingly find the administration’s actions unlawful. Circuit courts split more evenly but still lean against the administration. Then the Supreme Court—furthest from facts, closest to power—reverses almost automatically.

The federal judiciary’s multiple levels were designed to handle different types of cases and create orderly paths for appeal, with the Supreme Court as the final arbiter. But that system assumes good faith—that the highest court will exercise its power judiciously, reversing lower courts when they’ve erred, not simply when they rule against executive power.

In National TPS Alliance v. Noem, a district court blocked the administration from terminating Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals, but the Supreme Court intervened to grant the government a stay, allowing the terminations to proceed. In J.G.G. v. Trump, after a district court issued a temporary restraining order to stop the summary removal of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act, the Supreme Court again stepped in, vacating the lower court’s order.

The Supreme Court’s intervention in D.V.D. v. DHS exemplifies this pattern. Judge Brian E. Murphy confronted devastating evidence: DHS was deporting people to third countries with hours or minutes of notice, making it impossible to find lawyers or assert claims of persecution. Murphy crafted a narrow remedy—simply requiring advance written notice before deportation. The Supreme Court killed it with an unsigned midnight order, no explanation given. But the message–even left unsaid—was clear.

Federal judges now face coordinated assault from two directions. From the outside, the Trump administration treats court orders as suggestions while targeting judges personally. The president brands them “USA HATING JUDGES” and “MONSTERS.” His allies amplify these attacks into doxxing campaigns, death threats, and impeachment resolutions. From above, the Supreme Court systematically undermines their authority through these emergency reversals. As Justice Sotomayor has pointed out, the government is no longer required to prove its case to win these emergency requests. The Court isn’t correcting clear legal errors; it appears to be punishing lower courts for the act of constraining executive power.

Despite all the protesting-too-much from the Republican majority, this is precisely why the abuse of the shadow docket is so inconsistent with the rule of law in this context. Careful rulings protective of fundamental rights are being casually thrown out with not only no justification for how the balance of equities could favor the government so heavily as to justify an emergency stay but generally no reasoning at all. “Trump wins” is the only rule.

The next step is brutally logical:

Emboldened by the Supreme Court, the administration’s response was swift and unprecedented. On June 24, 2025—just one day after the Supreme Court’s order in D.V.D.—the Department of Justice sued the entire 15-judge bench of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Their supposed offense? Issuing a standing order that briefly pauses deportations for 48 hours to ensure a detainee’s last-minute appeal can actually be heard by a judge. This order came after the Maryland judges had watched DHS conduct midnight deportations while cases were pending, making judicial review impossible.

The DOJ’s lawsuit crosses a line that has stood for centuries. Federal judges have historically enjoyed absolute immunity from lawsuits over their judicial acts—a protection the government has always respected, until now. Most stunning is the DOJ’s core claim: that the mere act of pausing a deportation for 48 hours to allow for judicial review inflicts irreparable harm on the government. The administration is arguing that it is being injured by the very existence of judicial oversight.

The Supreme Court is already at war with the non-hardcore-MAGA parts of the federal judiciary; this is just the next step from the administration.

The post The Roberts Court is Trump’s personal Star Chamber appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.