Your job for the weekend

I am a huge fan of the British gardening show Gardeners World, hosted by the rakishly, ruggedly handsome Monty Don. I’m a gardener in Houston, so almost nothing he teaches me about gardening applies, but it’s the most soothing hour of television you’ll ever watch, trust me. Find some episodes on YouTube this weekend and just zone out, or subscribe to BritBox.

Toward the end of every episode, he gives British gardeners their jobs for that weekend. What to start, what to plant, what to prune. And I have a job for you this weekend:

Watch (or rewatch) “Raise Hell: The Life & Times Of Molly Ivins,” which is available to stream on a few platforms — it’s on some useless channel on Prime called Dox that you can get for free with a seven-day trial, just remember to cancel it immediately. I rewatched it last night and it reminded me that the Texas legislature has always been horrible, stupid and corrupt, and those of us who fight against their power have always been here, too, cracking wise and living life amidst our despair.

I wish I had other useful jobs for you, but I don’t really. Go for a walk. Read a book? Do people still read books? In this economy?

You might be tempted to think surely things have gotten better in the Texas legislature over the decades, but this Texas Monthly interview published today with political journalist Harvey Kronberg isn’t very reassuring.

TM: You’re close to a lot of the players at the Capitol, including the veterans—folks who have been around for a long time. How do they feel about the way governance has changed because of the way politics has changed, primarily the role of the Republican primary?

HK: Well, it depends on whether they’re winning or losing. But the veterans are chagrined and, for the most part—other than the fact that politics is so addictive—are looking forward to their exit plan. And so there’s a lot of chest-beating about how “I’m going to retire next year.”

One of the most common phrases you hear from the old guys is “Patrick is a cancer on the Senate.” The young guys—the young lobbyists and players—don’t understand the culture of consensus as opposed to the culture of confrontation. I don’t want to glamorize the past too much, but generally, all the impulses were to find consensus, not confrontation.

TM: I’m trying to think from the perspective of Republican grassroots activists. They see it very differently. They see their involvement in the process as bringing a kind of perpetual sense of accountability. So these lawmakers that they helped put in office know that they’re being watched at all times. And the activists have the receipts for the kind of damage that they can do if a member doesn’t toe the party line—the primaries last year being a great example of that.

HK: But that result was because Jeff Yass made Greg Abbott his bagman. The violence that he perpetrated on the House over the summer on something that’s not going to have any impact on student performance in any consequential way is frankly unforgivable. And, you know, talking to seventy-year-old members who are having to go to church and say, “I’m not the one lying; it’s the governor that’s lying”—that made it personal. [Some antivoucher GOP incumbents bemoaned the Abbott-funded ads attacking them as soft on the border.] And this is a community. If you play the game this long and you don’t have friends, even ones that you may attack on occasion, then you’re not understanding the game.

It’s a great, dishy interview. I recommend reading it.

This news will surprise no one, but the Texas House Speaker’s race attracted considerable bot attention on Twitter to try to sway the race toward the far-right candidate.

An army of automated bots mobilized late last year to attack state Rep. Dustin Burrows on social media as the Lubbock Republican campaigned in a hotly contested race to become the next speaker of the Texas House, according to a data analysis prepared by a Republican social media marketing company and shared with Hearst Newspapers.

The accounts on X blasted Burrows, who went on to win the race, as a “RINO,” “traitor,” and “Democrat shill,” and they promised GOP primary attacks against his supporters.

It’s impossible to find out who is behind this, but it’s definitely Tim Dunn.

Governor Abbott is giving his State of the State speech on Sunday, where he will lay out his priorities for this legislative session. I’ll probably watch and clown on it on Bluesky. I can’t imagine I’ll be surprised by any of it.

Finally, last night Instagram offered me a new and exciting opportunity: the ability to chat with AI characters! Just what I’ve always wanted from the photo sharing app that I use to desperately seek crumbs of information about friends I haven’t seen in a year. The first AI character option was John Pork.

Given that I am a well-read internet person, I know about John Pork and the whole John Pork Thing from my favorite newsletter, Garbage Day. This newsletter is from May of last year:

TikTok is going nuts for John Pork. As are Vancouver burger joints, apparently. Who is John Pork? Well, it should be obvious, he’s a somewhat horrifying-looking humanoid pig man that all the TikTok girlies can’t get enough of.

But in all seriousness, John Pork is a virtual influencer that launched on Instagram in 2018. Over the last few years, Pork has evolved. First into a piece of creepypasta, with TikTok users writing scary stories about him and, now, inevitably, everyone’s kind of horny for him.

Oh, you’ve never heard of a virtual influencer? Lame. Keep up.

I kept staring at this little avatar on my phone. He looked so familiar, beyond the John Pork-ness of it all. And then it dawned on me.

Thank you. Good night.