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Alexandra Petri

@petridishes.bsky.social
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  1. 1

    it’s even more demoralizing when the history you’re repeating is history you were around for the first time

    36,572 7,728
    Jun 22, 2025
  2. 2

    everything about this new Meta AI bot is so dystopian but for me the AI-generated images of nonexistent donated coats is up there

    AI-generated image of boxes of coats for donation with a caption that reads “kicking off the new year in service of our community”
    11,044 3,039
    Jan 3, 2025
  3. 3

    you know who should be inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame? Sisyphus

    17,209 2,908
    Dec 23, 2024
  4. 4

    Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children

    Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children
    The state’s elimination of vaccine mandates is a courageous first step toward decluttering itself of any excess kids.
    7,644 2,840
    Sep 4, 2025
  5. 5

    I guess it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president wapo.st/3UqHWRM

    The Washington Post is not bothering to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. (Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin and the founder and executive chairman of Amazon and Amazon Web Services, also owns The Post.) We as a newspaper suddenly remembered, less than two weeks before the election, that we had a robust tradition 50 years ago of not telling anyone what to do with their vote for president. It is time we got back to those “roots,” I’m told! Roots are important, of course. As recently as the 1970s, The Post did not endorse a candidate for president. As recently as centuries ago, there was no Post and the country had a king! Go even further back, and the entire continent of North America was totally uninhabitable, and we were all spineless creatures who lived in the ocean, and certainly there were no Post subscribers. But if I were the paper, I would be a little embarrassed that it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to make our presidential endorsement. I will spare you the suspense: I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them. Let me tell you something. I am having a baby (It’s a boy!), and he is expected on Jan. 6, 2025 (It’s a … Proud Boy?). This is either slightly funny or not at all funny. This whole election, I have been lurching around, increasingly heavily pregnant, nauseated, unwieldy, full of the commingled hopes and terrors that come every time you are on the verge of introducing a new person to the world. Well, that world will look very different, depending on the outcome of November’s election, and I care which world my kid gets born into. I also live here myself. And I happen to care about the people who are already here, in this world. Come to think of it, I have a lot of reasons for caring how the election goes. I think it should be obvious that this is not an election for sitting out. The case for Donald Trump is “I erroneously think the economy used to be better? I know that he has made many ominous-sounding threats about mass deportations, going after his political enemies, shutting down the speech of those who disagree with him (especially media outlets), and that he wants to make things worse for almost every category of person — people with wombs, immigrants, transgender people, journalists, protesters, people of color — but … maybe he’ll forget.” “But maybe he’ll forget” is not enough to hang a country on! Embarrassingly enough, I like this country. But everything good about it has been the product of centuries of people who had no reason to hope for better but chose to believe that better things were possible, clawing their way uphill — protesting, marching, voting, and, yes, doing the work of journalism — to build this fragile thing called democracy. But to be fragile is not the same as to be perishable, as G.K. Chesterton wrote. Simply do not break a glass, and it will last a thousand years. Smash it, and it will not last an instant. Democracy is like that: fragile, but only if you shatter it. Trust is like that, too, as newspapers know. I’m just a humor columnist. I only know what’s happening because our actual journalists are out there reporting, knowing that their editors have their backs, that there’s no one too powerful to report on, that we would never pull a punch out of fear. That’s what our readers deserve and expect: that we are saying what we really think, reporting what we really see; that if we think Trump should not return to the White House and Harris would make a fine president, we’re going to be able to say so. That’s why I, the humor columnist, am endorsing Kamala Harris by myself!
    7,759 2,450
    Oct 26, 2024
  6. 6

    I am no parliamentarian but if you can just hold the vote open indefinitely after the votes are in until you get the outcome you want that feels uhhh
    not democratic

    8,841 1,603
    Jul 3, 2025
  7. 7

    www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

    The Big, Beautiful Bill assigns each American a billionaire who will live the American dream for you. You can check in on your billionaire at intervals and see how he is using your money. Maybe he's building a 19th pool. Maybe he's buying himself some formerly public land! Maybe he's taking a Supreme Court justice on a dream vacation! Maybe he is reupholstering the Statue of Liberty to hide the poem.
    5,149 1,556
    Jul 1, 2025
  8. 8

    “and every June you’ll have to spend a day rapidly reloading the page to see how many of your rights have expired” -the Founders probably

    4,221 1,014
    Jun 27, 2025
  9. 9

    writing is so funny it’s like “this is my favorite thing to do in the world and my dream” “okay then do it right now” “no thanks I would rather do literally anything else”

    4,768 982
    Oct 10, 2024
  10. 10

    personally would not describe the myth of a man cursed to roll a rock uphill FRUITLESSLY FOR ALL ETERNITY as “a reminder that you can overcome anything” but you do you, meta ad

    a picture of a necklace with a figure on it who is pushing some kind of pearl or bauble up the necklace chain, labeled “the Sisyphus necklace”… “a reminder that you can overcome anything”
    7,545 897
    Mar 5, 2025
  11. 11

    love to listen to Supreme Court oral arguments about fun hypotheticals like “if you have a womb is it possible you aren’t a person” and “should we have a king”

    2,438 756
    Apr 25, 2024
  12. 12

    do you think they’re enjoying the main course yet at the Epstein Strategy Dinner or still sort of milling around

    5,752 713
    Aug 6, 2025
  13. 13

    I will say if that whole military meeting had been an email it would have been a pretty weird email

    6,101 692
    Sep 30, 2025
  14. 14

    sorry I seem distracted just have to keep checking my phone to see if one of my freedoms is being arbitrarily taken away

    3,315 628
    May 11, 2026
  15. 15

    speak loudly and ask if you can borrow somebody else’s stick

    2,936 563
    Mar 31, 2026
  16. 16

    some personal news! www.theatlantic.com/press-releas...

    The Atlantic Hires Alexandra Petri as Staff Writer
    None
    11,088 560
    May 12, 2025
  17. 17

    on the one hand I should absolutely put my phone down but on the other hand what if the forces attacking democracy operate on weeping angels logic

    2,906 531
    Aug 23, 2025
  18. 18

    www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

    As a member of ICE, you may be wondering: How are the people we thrust into our vans supposed to know that we are, in fact, acting under color of law and not just kidnapping them? Can I really do this job while wearing either an Army uniform that I have assembled myself in a confusing, over-the-top way or the same T-shirt I just wore to my failed custody hearing?
    2,529 512
    Jun 24, 2025
  19. 19

    this column is what comes out when you smash your head repeatedly into the keyboard in a fit of rage wapo.st/3Z6fMhu

    Opinion | RFK Jr. to head newly formed Department of Disease Efficiency
    We mistakenly thought that finding a dead mouse in your frozen ravioli dinner was a failure.
    2,154 492
    Nov 15, 2024
  20. 20

    Apologies! You have reached the end of your free trial period of America

    Apologies: You Have Reached the End of Your Free-Trial Period of America!
    Want rule of law? That’s premium.
    1,469 386
    Sep 2, 2025
  21. 21

    the sandwich crimes unit contemplates the incident
    www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

    Detective F: Not all the sandwiches were harmless. Some were clubs. People were too frightened of sandwiches to build a Subway in Georgetown. Officer K: I still have a scar from when I took a meatball sub to the chin in '96 and, afterward, got into an unrelated knife fight. Officer J: I started here after transferring from the bread-crimes division in France. I spent decades hunting down a man who stole bread one time. My name is Javert, but that's not important. His name was Jean Valjean. I also resented him because I had just the one name and he had two.
    1,988 384
    Aug 19, 2025
  22. 22

    every headline now is like: What If I Told You Your Tax Dollars Were Going To An Amazing Program That Saves Lives And Costs Pennies? Unfortunately Elon Musk Just Dismantled It For Good!!

    1,834 367
    Mar 4, 2025
  23. 23

    Pete Hegseth 🤝 Lady Macbeth

    have some bad ideas for the
    soldiers
    weird handwashing thing

    2,779 364
    Nov 13, 2024
  24. 24

    if you want a long read that involves udders, a hot air balloon, and some extremely dubious data on egg prices, the story I’ve been working on for the last few months where I tried to single-handedly take on every government function myself is now online! www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

    I Tried to Be the Government. It Did Not Go Well.
    My five-month quest to monitor the weather, track inflation, and inspect milk for harmful microorganisms
    1,569 358
    Jan 8, 2026
  25. 25

    here’s hoping 2026 is just one year

    2,307 350
    Jan 1, 2026