Brian Fencl @FenclBrian

Repost and reply for a chance to win this autographed Paul Skenes @Topps card!

MLB @MLB

5 days ago

Paul Skenes turns 24 today! Last year, Skenes became only the third pitcher to win the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young within the first two seasons of his career, following: Fernando Valenzuela (ROY & Cy Young 1981) Dwight Gooden (ROY 1984, Cy Young 1985)

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See this Instagram post by @american_illustration_winners instagram.com/p/DYC-yCalQj1/…

The 14,000 employees at Spirit who’ve lost their job loss, the travelers who will now pay higher fares, and the shareholders and debt holders who have been wiped out can thank Elizabeth Warren. Electing left politicians, who have ZERO business experience, has consequences.

Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren

2 years ago

I've warned for months that a @JetBlue-@SpiritAirlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares. @JusticeATR and @USDOT were right to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation. This is a Biden win for flyers! apnews.com/article/jetblu…

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The 1960s Art School Experiment That Redefined Creativity thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-1960s-art-… #Art #Creativity #Footnotes #Psychology via @mitpress

In honor of a very successful Opening Weekend at PNC Park, we're giving away this team-autographed poster. RT for your chance to win! 🏴‍☠️

Matthew Tkachuk just submitted his Goal of the Year application 🔥

Hello Senator Thune, At 3 AM on Friday, March 27th, in a near-empty chamber, you passed a bill by voice vote that excludes all funding for ICE and CBP. Let me repeat that: voice vote. No roll call. No record of who was there. No accountability. Just you, Barrasso, and a handful of senators shuffling paper in the dead of night while America slept. You could have demanded a recorded vote. You chose not to. You could have held the line for five more days until the House returned. You chose not to. You could have used the same procedural tools Democrats have used against you for 40 days. You chose not to. Instead, you gave Chuck Schumer exactly what he asked for, DHS funding minus immigration enforcement, and called it a win. Then you walked to the cameras and blamed the Democrats. Let's be precise about what you did: 1. You caved to a demand Democrats made on Day 1 of this shutdown. Forty-one days of supposed hardball negotiation, and you settled for their opening offer. 2. You handed them a template. The next time Democrats want to defund any agency — ICE, CBP, or anything else — they now know: just shut down DHS and wait. John Thune will fold at 3 AM. 3. You punted to reconciliation. "Good possibility," you said. Not "we will." Not "guaranteed." Just maybe. Meanwhile, ICE operates on fumes from last year's bill with no certainty of future funding. The precedent you set: You have argued for months that the filibuster is sacrosanct. That the 60-vote threshold protects minority rights. That we cannot bend Senate rules for policy wins. But at 3 AM on Friday, you bent every norm that actually mattered: • Voice vote to avoid accountability • Empty chamber to avoid debate • Midnight deal to avoid scrutiny • Immediate recess to avoid questions You'll bend the rules to avoid a fight. You just won't bend them to win one. What you've actually accomplished: Democrats demanded ICE restrictions. They got ICE defunded. Not reformed. Not restrained. Defunded. And you're out here tweeting about how Democrats are the "Defund the Police" party while you just voted to defund border enforcement at 3 in the morning. The question you should answer: Why did this deal have to happen at 3 AM? Why couldn't it happen at 3 PM, with cameras rolling and every senator on record? You know why. Because you didn't want your voters to see what surrender looks like. Here's my message: We saw it anyway. Stop hiding behind "Democrat obstruction." You're the Majority Leader. You set the schedule. You control the floor. You chose this outcome. Own it.

Photos and my self portraits from our day 1 workshop at University Jan Kochanowski in Kielce, Poland. Great group to work with and interesting conversation about creativity, art education and how to respond as the systems around us change rapidly.

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In the lovely city of Kielce, Poland this week to spend time with the fine people of Jan Kochanowski University. Looking forward to teaching the “cultivating creativity” workshops. with their students. I’m grateful for my life as an artist and educator.

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When the Oxford children's dictionary discarded dozens of nature-words—"dandelion," "fern," "starling"—as irrelevant to children's imagination and replaced them with words like "broadband" and "cut-and-paste," this inspired act of resistance was born: themarginalian.org/2019/06/17/the…

2 pieces headed to Bloomfield Richwood gallery for their 5th anniversary invitational show. Surviving for 5 years in the art world is worth celebrating.

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When I sat down with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, I was expecting a thoughtful conversation and that he would ask questions and give me the opportunity to actually respond--just like he did with the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy. What I wasn't anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren't really same people as the Jews of the Bible. I'll first just say something I didn't think to say to Tucker, which is that Ashkenazi Jews, meaning those who families had spent centuries in Europe, are a minority of Israel's Jewish population, only maybe 35-40%. There are far more Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews inside Israel. But there's a good reason, as it turns out, that I had never encountered this theory that Tucker kept pushing on. That’s because it comes from some of the darkest realms of the Internet and social media. I think it's important to take a moment now and educate Tucker and anyone else who might get sucked in by this dangerous conspiracy theory, just as I have been educated this week. I'm sharing this information because it has been weaponized by very bad people to delegitimize Jews and strip them of their history. It's an idea that gained traction in the 80's and 90's with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis. It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt anti-Semites and Jew haters you can find. I don’t know why Tucker was so fixated on this, and I'm certainly not saying he knew the origins of this conspiracy theory. I don't know what's in his heart or what he was thinking. But I do know that the discredited idea that most Ashkenazi or European Jews descended from the ancient Turkic kingdom of Khazaria is bunk. It's also been weaponized by people trying to deligitimize Jews, to strip them of their history, and to call them "imposters" or "fake Jews." This odious conspiracy theory is peddled by the likes of Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and by people who love David Duke, as well as Islamist accounts that make up false smears about Israel non-stop and are run out of countries like Pakistan and Turkey. But we know from genetics and rich volumes of written literature that the Jews of today can trace their lineage back thousands of years to the Israel and the Jewish people of the Bible. They are as connected together as genetics tell us that the ancient Khazar kingdom is to people living today in Turkey. And if Tucker wants to tour more than Ben-Gurion Airport on his next trip to Israel, I'm happy to show him places where Jews have lived going back to the time of Jesus Christ and even earlier. I sincerely hope Tucker will let me know when he actually wants to learn facts about the land and people. Asking me about conspiracy theories should remain on the fringes and not be the heart of the conversation.

Something inspired by my research with the American Antiquarian Society. I’m thinking it will make a fun sticker. Created using Adobe Fresco.

Again, @IntelligencerWV hits the nail on the head regarding the government-run school system: “Combining districts should eliminate bureaucracy, as well as allow those districts to cast a wider net to find school board candidates with the background and experience to effectively oversee those districts…far too many school districts in West Virginia are showing an inability to govern themselves.” theintelligencer.net/opinion/editor…

There’s gonna be 0 to 500 inches of snow this wknd. It will be cold. Not hot, but cold. And windy. Probably, but maybe not. The winter weather advisory will start as soon as Giant Eagle runs out of milk 🥶 P.S. We have plows. Like really, really big ones, so don’t worry about us 😉

“Abraham’s Pop Surrealist Dream,” graphite on paper, 2026. First image in a new body of America 250 work inspired by my fellowship with the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Ma.

The Ann Hamilton exhibit is amazing. The first three photos don’t do it justice because it is an immersive experience and there is so much to see and feel in the details all around you. When an exhibit is hard to define verbally but you know you experienced something important.

Sharing a few images and observations from my afternoon at the @clevelandmuseumofart. The art museum is incredible and if you have never been there add it to your list of important places to visit. The museum was packed with people and in the best way. L

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Point by point. 1/ Creativity isn't hard because tools are hard to use. Creativity is hard because it's slow, hard labor to learn enough about reality to notice anything significant in it and then put those significant pieces together coherently. 2/ Rapidly generating endless permutations does nothing to help with the problem described above. 3/ AI is extremely limiting. It generates pixels. Anyone who's taught art knows that using new materials opens new doors to creativity. AI has one door, and your participation level is nil. 4/ The gatekeepers are just changing, not disappearing. The AI oligarchy are the new gatekeepers. They charge a subscription fee not just for a tool, but for your monthly access to "creativity." 5/ If you know how to tell a good story, AI automatically loses an enormous amount of appeal. 6/ If you assault audiences with a deluge of AI slop they will avoid you, not hang around and wait to see if something sticks. Everything you produce as an artist is your reputation. 7/ The current gatekeepers are mad that there are new gatekeepers coming in, yes. Their squabble over power is not relevant to what's good for human beings at a psychological, social and spiritual level. 8/ Much is changing. My goal is to protect a new generation from being told there's no value in the daily, frustrating, mundane pursuit of excellence when I know that there is.

Mark Cuban @mcuban

6 months ago

Creators should LOVE Ai. AI doesn’t make uncreative people creative. It allows creators to become exponentially more creative. Creative iteration that used to take hours , days or weeks, can happen in minutes. The different routes you wanted to take but didn’t have the

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Thank you to Higgins Ink for including my work in the winners circle. That was a fun project: instagram.com/p/DRceplfDu6g/…