I gotta stick to my guns that although vulnerability is contextual, susceptibility is fundamentally general - ergo, future-resilient (if not "future-proof") counter-strategies should be ideologically agnostic, because the ecology isn't going to get any more stable.

And when you consider this lack of ecological stability in the context of coding "left" and "right" wing terrorist attacks, it makes the definitional issues all the more challenging (and maybe less relevant?). More food for thought today.

"If there’s any fact we know about history, it’s that everybody’s been moving everywhere and having sex with everybody, forever." — Paul Spickard, professor of history, UC Santa Barbara

The white supremacist conceit that everyone in antiquity was living under some kind of global jim crow segregation is just complete bullshit news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

It’s also the same thing we do when we play games. A commenter brought up TTRPGs, but all kinds of play involve prompting toward mutual make-believe. Children naturally know when to stop playing, but it’s something we often forget how to do when we become serious adults. We take prompts seriously.

1/ While everyone is focused on Comey, Trump did this today. How many more of us will be targeted? How many rounded up? How many designated terrorists and prosecuted before those who remain on the sidelines finally open their eyes to what’s happening? www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

You raise a great point. I don't think the tendency toward coherence (or put another way, toward sense-making) will be defeated by the ecosystem, but I think things will be much more fluid than we are accustomed to due to the ecology.

The fluidity of the ecology from which these events emerge begs the question of whether achieving coherence is even an option, or will we face continuous, rapid transitions? Previous waves - for lack of a better word - benefited from ecological stability that is structurally not possible anymore.

Some of the best hours of my life have been spent in LA bookstores.

I think the key problem here is a continuing assumption, in traditional media, that when the White House speaks on a major topic, this is a big news story. That model can't cope with a president with no regard for truth, who's in constant broadcast mode, & who veers around from one day to another.

Give him a break. It's Milan Fashion Week.

Very useful systematic review by my UCL colleagues of all the crimes that can be facilitated by internet-of-things devices. Just in case you were in need of some nightmare food.

Is she an avatar? Nothing moves above her cheekbones.

Never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Assembly walkout. What a historical moment it would have been.

The war on drugs vol. 2.

I might go full pagan for the equinox because why not.

The federal government right now is not serious about homeland security, example # a bunch

Did I... transport to Planet B?

Pour l’histoire et pour la paix. En tant que juive, j’ai profondément ancré en moi qu’il est juste que les Palestiniennes et les Palestiniens aient droit à un état digne de ce nom. Les positions extrémistes de Netanyahu montre qu’il n’a rien appris de notre histoire.

September brings me back to life.

It must be Tuesday. Again. (The platform changes, but the crazy remains.)

Crockett: "I'm gonna honor someone who decided they were going to proclaim I was involved in the 'great white replacement'? Yeah, I'm not honoring that ... it's unfortunate more of my colleagues even on my side couldn't see the amount of harm this man was attempting to inflict upon our communities"

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

I can't believe anyone thought this would go any other way, and I only follow British politics from afar (very very afar).

Of all the ridiculous “now that we have [x], we don’t need a knowledge-rich curriculum”, AI is maybe the silliest. How else are you meant to know whether it is right or wrong?

Swathes of America at once intrinsically religious, ritualistic even, yet fundamentally devoid of spirituality.

Still rare to see a more-than-passing mention of NVE in French media.

“Estimates by experts suggest that the child death toll may be in the hundreds of thousands this year alone—and likely an even higher number next year…[one] study estimated that some 3.1 million children under age 5 would die during Trump’s second term” from aid cuts www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

A memorial service Thursday for William Webster, former FBI and CIA director, served as something of a wake for an era that seems ever more distant in the age of Donald Trump.

dang, they lost the hulk, aunt may, and mr fantastic

The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States. 🔗 www.404media.co/doj-deletes-...

Crying

The technical term is "bureaucratic mirroring". We do it to our opponents all the time. Governments should know better than to do it to each other, but they do it anyway. Fascists do it to the rest of us, as well. They imagine we're all opportunistic whiny bitches, because that's what they are.

Ou comment confondre implicitement la Palestine et le Hamas et tous les Palestiniens avec des terroristes.

I miss late 90s web. Clunky hand-coded blogs and all.

La fameuse « modernité réactionnaire » si bien décrite par Jeffrey Herf (il parlait des Nazis).

Crikey. You could rewrite this as "The US is leading a global ultranationalist movement"

New ringtone.

The Dumb Tower has no ceiling.

We’d be in a much stronger position right now if mainstream Democrats had taken a common sense stand for First Amendment principles instead of piling on undergraduate standing up for Palestine.

Shame I've got nothing to cancel.

Now I have to binge Xena. Not that I ever go too long without binging Xena, what with Prime On Now. I'm mean: it's. right. there.

There has been a fair amount of misunderstanding about what the Com Network is, as well as a misuse of the term “Nihilistic Violent Extremism,” which has become a catch-all in the media and popular culture to describe a complex and ever-evolving ecosystem. 1/ www.maargentino.com/beyond-the-h...

First year since COVID I'm making a dent in my Prime and Netflix queues as more than just background noise while I do admin.

Because I want to give away even more control over my perception of reality. Sure sure.

Technology makes the maintenance of a fifth-column moral ecology possible in a way and on a scale that (I think?) has no historical precedent. Whether that would work for or against the consolidating authoritarian power in the long run is one hell of a systemic thought problem.

It's wild to me how ostensibly smart people cannot/could not/will not see what is so obvious. @mmasnick.bsky.social nails it. And my hunch is we'd be a better society if the Very Serious People with the Very Serious Ideas opened their fucking eyes. www.techdirt.com/2025/09/17/t...