Learned that an anonymous outside expert on submersibles did an interview with the OceanGate Titan investigation, and they released a transcript, with all the names redacted. The first line of his first answer? "I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic."

This is exactly backwards, the no kings protests are a mass movement of regular people that have every republican politician in the country raging about "hate America rallies," and the online protest industry weirdos who say shit like "radlib" to each other are the ones skimming off the top of them

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

I interviewed one of these factory workers in Los Angeles. She gets paid three cents to sew a zipper, five cents for a collar, and seven cents to prepare the top part of a skirt. This is how fast fashion brands like Fashion Nova can put "Made in USA" tags on dress shirts that retail for only $25

Kinda interesting how — under California institutions — catenary poles and wires going through 1950s suburban locations or coastal areas are objectionable due to aesthetic and visual impacts while Italy is out there wiring up underneath 278 year old aqueducts.

It's not just bribery. He's now using personal litigation, backed by state extortion, to extract "settlements" which he then puts into an account he created to spend on government work, all entirely outside of Congress taxing or appropriating. It's full Charles I illegal taxation and spending.

One of the best things about Liberalism is that it freed people from the tyranny of communal and traditional rule.

The full might of Sinclair's *kulturkampf* couldn't withstand wine moms being angry for a single week. These people are weak and fragile and we can and will win.

These numbers spell very bad electoral news for the party in power and its president if they don’t improve in 2026.

like i was saying

the thing i'm worried about is whether AI will decimate the "flow states" of knowledge work. i realize this is very selfish. i enjoy being in a flow state. i don't want to constantly be babysitting an unlearning intern who repeatedly violates instructions. even if they eventually produce good work

currently at record-high search interest for canceling disney plus. pulling kimmel is a bigger deal to the company's bottom line than any of the "woke" scandals of the past 5 years. i think news & entertainment corp execs need put more work into understanding their audience, & get off twitter

HARDEST PHOTO OF 2025 JUST DROPPED

they don't have the capacity to compel obedience by the process of law. they don't have the capacity to compel obedience by violence. the only lever by which they can obtain obedience is fear. do not offer it to them.

"Only eight years ago it was unthinkable that Britain would implement a bathroom ban like some US red states were. Now we have the most authoritarian ban of any peer nation and a Labour government is implementing it without a vote."

idk if you've seen this south korean editorial that ran a few days ago. google translate version scorched my eyebrows www.hani.co.kr/arti/opinion...

One thing today really shows is how many middle-aged conservative pundits who've let themselves be swept along with Trumpism as if he's just another Republican president really have no clue the tiger they're riding and what online extremist meme culture is really like, and what it thinks of them.

If anyone wants the clip of Cox saying "notices your bulge OwO what's this?" to send to people I got you

Which is to say a functional democracy can’t just give the people what they want. It has to call people, in their capacity as citizens, to be their better selves and want decent things. And maybe there’s an unseemly whiff of aristocracy around that, but it looks like maybe it’s not optional.

Look, at some level you cannot have a functioning democracy where both parties presuppose an electorate of selfish, ignorant louts and compete to offer them the best array of goodies, which is more or less what “focus on kitchen table issues” means. You have to activate some kind of civic impulse.

I do think you’ve gotta hand it to Ezra Klein for this one, which we need more of, much more, from his peers www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/o...

It’s very popular among certain groups on here to be anti-anti-popularist and anti-anti-Abundance, but none of those groups ever seem to have any answer for why so many of their faves keep finding themselves in social proximity to dyed-in-the-wool race science promoters.

The Kant Car

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

The latest on how the internet has made us all medieval peasants: “this cookie chain has the spirit of the perfidious Jew behind it”

Eight members of the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Bass think that the stations on rail lines that Californians spent billions of dollars to build should be surrounded by two million dollar single family homes instead of apartment buildings with homes set aside for working class Angelenos.

OMG KBJ CONSECRATES SCOTUS CALVINBALL INTO THE US REPORTS

Trump: "I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I hear I'm not doing well. I hear I'm really at the bottom of the totem pole."

Also, this plot never fails to scare me. All of recorded human history - domesticated crops, cities, religion, etc. - happened during an anomalously stable period in our climate history. Our efforts have now pushed us out of that zone. Humans existed before then... but we were migratory.

We built something: an open, liberal society that promised people could feel safe and protected no matter who they were. It wasn’t perfect but we were slowly making it better. It was prosperous almost beyond comprehension. And now these monstrous bigots and criminals are burning it down for fun.

As someone who has lived my whole adult life in cities deemed “dangerous”—NYC, NOLA, and SF—I think a lot about how dense cities require patience, calm, and tolerance in the midst of social difference, which are of course exactly the civic virtues that the right resents being told to cultivate.

Theories of the Atonement: - Moral Exemplar - Divine Ransom - Christus Victor - Satisfaction - Governmental - Penal Substitution - Clout

It's so cool how the UK now has Russia-style laws against protest

the guy I wish this site was more fixated on going after was Seth Moulton, a defiantly committed transphobe with an actual, personal fixation on the sports issue and has weak enough standing within the party that you might be able to successfully make an example out of him

Normally, you recruit children and old men in the dying days of a losing war.

‘God, please fix me’ Inside the dangerous resurgence of ‘ex-gay’ conversion therapy Full Story: bit.ly/3HmVkmr

i honestly regard the republican party in the united states as a type of barbarian invasion. the illiterate steppe people come to knock down our temples and use our scrolls for firewood.

You got a fucking free, fully furnished house and you're still complaining about not having a servant. I despise these people.

the thing i don't get about this is that sure, you're some groyper who thinks the posters look cool. but, like, you must know that the nazis lost, and they didn't just lose, they lost to the people they *deemed inferior*: a polyglot nation of shopkeepers on one front & russian peasants on the other

i continue to think that “family annihilator” is a useful frame for the trump administration futurism.com/white-house-...

ILLINOIS GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D): "If they're gonna cheat, then all of us have to take a hard look at what the effect of that cheating is on democracy . And that means we've all got to stand up and do the right thing. So as far as I'm concerned, everything is on the table."

One aspect of the quorum break that's not getting much coverage is that it also killed the anti-trans bathroom bill, at least for now.

If you regularly read the news and try to discuss it with another person you will sound more insane than a raving street preacher. Waving a big REPENT sign mumbling something about the bureau of labor statistics

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. — alexis de tocqueville

jesus: panamaplaylists.com

A lot of people only “support” trans folks because we’re seen as shocking and deviant in a way that lets them burnish their edgelord or more tolerant than thou credentials and get really mad when normies accept us or we’re just guys, gals, and NB pals vibing instead of freaky little court jesters.

The clerks where I get my lunch said a man came in last week and asked them where the public entrance to 26 Federal Plaza was. He locked his bike outside, and it’s been there since.

my fellow angelenos, this is an excellent start, but i think we can do even better