If I were very rich and wanted to use my money to protect American liberties, I'd build on the grand jury momentum we're seeing by taking out ads everywhere I could to educate Americans about jury nullification so every juror going forward knows it's an option.

My best advice for parents re: harmful content: show genuine interest in the stuff your kid is watching and doing online. Let them talk your ear off about Minecraft and Roblox and the funny video they just watched. Make them feel excited to share with you, vs making them feel ashamed or judged

When Substack's ownership highlights creators using the platform, it's through puff interviews with far-right grifters who spread hate against the LGBT community. Patreon, on the other hand...

It's becoming clear that the Constitution dictates whatever SCOTUS is *not* ruling. The problem is, from time to time it still gets things right, but at this point future courts will pretty much be able to, and must, repudiate whatever comes out of this one. Which daily we see is obviously wrong.

Man i know this gets said a lot but god twitter has really turned into such a fucking hell hole

My advice on how to approach this awful moment, and all the awful moments sure to come. www.patreon.com/posts/139645...

I really wish there was a grand treaty where big business and progressive grass roots teamed up. If Trump tries to do heinous illegal shit to Intel, Indivisible gets folks in the streets and out in force on their behalf. If Trump targets the marginalized, biz contributes to defend their rights

Timeline syncing. I want the app and Bluesky in my browser to remember where I am in reading my timeline and stay synced with each other. And for new posts to load in above my current position. I'm a timeline completionist.

The superintendent they just kidnapped is a former Olympic athlete who runs footraces with the kids from his schools while wearing a maroon suit and a bowtie. This is quite simply about the people in power feeling threatened by Black excellence.

The Trump administration would be doing a lot more damage right now if they hadn't driven everyone with any competence out of the GOP.

Yes, you could win some money, but to do it, you'd have to admit not just to having a PragerU account but to watching PragerU videos.

JD Vance appropriating the term "blood libel" to describe legitimate criticism of ICE agents is one of the most antisemitic things I have heard in US politics in the past few weeks. Yet this administration has somehow managed to convince a lot of people it actually cares about fighting antisemitism.

There are admirable conservatives, but they're not the conservatives these guys want us to admire. The basic feature of the American right in our Trumpist moment is a bunch of unadmirable guys who don't understand what it takes to be admirable, and so instead demand all of us admire them.

"this is why for the good of democracy i have sought out the most disturbing ideas possible – 1000 pages of tumblr subcultural infighting"

The author's bio is exactly what you'd expect it to be, including the performative-tough-guy-but-actually-makes-him-look-exceptionally-fragile "discovering, in the process, that Greenwich Village is scarier than Baghdad" line. yaf.org/people/geoff...

The thing about Trumpists and their enablers is if you stand up to them, they'll pretty often back down.

I have to disagree with both Shirley and Powers about this. Present tense isn't objectively better than past tense, but it's not worse, either. In general, given the kind of prose I like, I have a preference for present tense. E.g., I think it often works better than past tense for crime fiction.

Shifting TikTok to push right-wing content, which it's a safe bet will happen under its proposed new ownership group, the result will be driving the kids off TikTok. They've switched platforms before, and many times. They'll just do it again.

I wrote this before the election, based on conversations with friends who work in DC policy circles and were seeing it first-hand, about how Trumpism was driving talent out of the GOP and how the GOP's pipeline for new talent was clogged with grifters and dregs. Everything since has confirmed it.

It is permissible and correct to call them authoritarians if that's what they are. It is permissible and correct to call them fascists if that's what they are.

Trumpists hate cities because cities put the lie to the entire Trumpist narrative about societal health and decay. www.patreon.com/posts/why-ri...

I don't know what a roaring bitmap is, but "Roaring Bitmaps" would've been a great name for a 90s industrial band.

The joke's on Pete. Those guys' medals melted in hell's flames long ago.

Recurring gripe of mine but it is incredible how National Conservatism is supposedly built around decrying lack of community, common project etc, while turning every “hate your neighbors” dial they can access up to 11. Make your professor terrified to say anything, don’t trust your doctor, etc

I'm rereading William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. Just finished Count Zero and am a good chuck into Mona Lisa Overdrive. And I'm struck by how exceptionally controlled his tone is. The novels have a consistent feeling in a pretty remarkable way.

Now that Trump's new executive order has outlawed the promotion of radical ideas opposing the administration's ideology, you might enjoy my podcast about the emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical liberalism. pod.link/1614436300

This is bad, but also vital to remember: it’s an EO. It’s not a new law. It’s just instructions to his appointees. Who remain constrained by the Fed criminal code. And, to preempt the doomers: Those. Laws. Are. Holding. That’s why Trump’s losing it over Comey in EDVA.

If they had the capacity to do this, it would be really bad. And they probably will try to do a couple of high profile examples to make you think they *do* have the capacity. But like a lot of stuff, this is a memo designed to get you to voluntarily stop doing stuff they don’t like.

People are mocking this, but, look, the guy is just being consistent. If your thing is first principles, you have to reject abbreviations, because first principles definitionally cannot be abbreviations.

My sixteen year old has very strongly held political opinions she expresses often and loudly and for the life of me I don't know where she got this from.

You can say a lot about how much Bluesky sucks but they tried to cancel Dril here and are accusing Darth of suppressing free speech so you know we are COOKING WITH GAS

Some of the rage about "Blueskyism" is that a lot of newsletter writer types over on X have a lot of beliefs that are the result of the steps I outline in this article, but those nonsense beliefs are widely shared on X. When they come here, though, they get told, "Actually, that's nonsense."

It's possible this prediction looks pretty stupid in the coming months, but I wager Trump's new plan of weaponizing the DOJ against the funders and foundations of liberal America will be less successful now than if he'd tried it back in the "Well, I guess he has a mandate" early days.

The search is underway for someone with executive experience named Koopa.

I think this is right. The US is facing a crisis of mass alienation and atomization but it's unevenly distributed along various lines, including gender. And alienation among men is a particular problem because they're disproportionately likely to turn to violence absent social constraints.

people care about men being lonely in particular because under patriarchy the belief is that men are entitled to women's deference/bodies/affection, and if they're not getting that, then there's a crisis.

If loneliness is widespread, and greater than it used to be, and is particularly bad among the kinds of men who are very online in self-consciously masculine communities, the fact that pop Stoicism is so popular right now I suspect makes loneliness worse and harder to dig out of.

This stuff denies agency. It's framed as men on the right are always and only responding to the actions of the left. It's "they're moving right *because* you don't like them" instead of "the beliefs and behavioral traits young men are choosing both lead them to the right *and* make them unlikable."

I wrote a whole book about this, and how to come to grips with it: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

One of the reasons much of the liberty movement failed to take seriously the rise of authoritarianism, and is failing to respond adequately now that it is here, is, as @cathyreisenwitz.com and I discuss, because of a persistent blindspot for seeing politics through a cultural and psychological lens.

The reason Trump won is that people like this actually refused to believe his own words, substituting their own fanfic Trump instead bsky.app/profile/shar...

I’m angry and tired of this idea that just because someone puts on the decorations of a faith that they are taken as pious and devout representatives of that faith. I think it’s insulting to believers who actually try and follow the precepts of generosity, kindness, meekness, and mercy laid out.

Just gotta upload all the shooters to the Blockchain.

One of the reasons much of the liberty movement failed to take seriously the rise of authoritarianism, and is failing to respond adequately now that it is here, is, as @cathyreisenwitz.com and I discuss, because of a persistent blindspot for seeing politics through a cultural and psychological lens.

When I say that being anti-vaccine is a political identity now I mean literally. Look at the divide between MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans. During COVID the Virality Project documented the extent to which political influencers who’d never commented on 💉 before got deep into the topic on all shots.

He'll be just as successful in his new role.

There's no one positioned in inherit the MAGA movement after Trump is gone, because there's no one with the characteristics of Trump that make him appealing to Trump voters. And Trump's own solipsism means he's never been interested in cultivating a political heir.

it's 2007. you're scrolling your favorite rss feeds in google reader. the internet ad market has led to a boom in mid-sized blogs that can employ tens of writers and editors in a relatively niche subject. you don't know it, but this is the last time journalism will be any good.

Again, this is a broad coalition of people across the ideological spectrum whose top concern is making sure everyone rues and laments the “Woke Times” forever. It’s very much akin to the myths around “Negro misrule” in Reconstruction, which justified Jim Crow.

If only we’d known in 2015 that we could just turn off the escalator.