I'm looking forward to chatting with @ositanwanevu.com next Thursday, November 13, at PVD's @symposiumbooks.bsky.social. His book "The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding," is fascinating. Join us!

Race called, she lost and Jones won.

score one for "the pundits are projecting their own preoccupations onto the electorate"

If I'm right in assuming voters will feel worse about the economy in a year than they do now...well...it'll be an interesting night.

One note: ICE field offices cover regions. So these locations don’t necessarily mean that the cities listed will be targets (though I’m not saying they won’t be). www.ice.gov/doclib/about...

And I would like to challenge this person to get a real job

I think I'm going to sit down for an interview with Isaac Chotiner. I'm also going to tug on Superman's cape, spit into the wind, pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger, and mess around with Jim

dickerson is one of the best broadcast journalists in the game, and someone who would clearly be a real asset to a new leader interested in strengthening the network's journalism. but, of course, we know weiss isn't actually interested in journalism as such.

by OpenAI’s own estimates, hundreds of thousands of ChatGPT users are showing signs of manic or psychotic crisis every week

I was at the Getty Villa last week and it was a reminder that the wealthy in this country, evil as they might have been, once believed in human progress — which they thought they represented, naturally — and feared retribution. They now fear nothing and are ambivalent about the human being.

I think this probably hurts Trump. Is it a reckoning? The counties hardest hit by COVID in 2020 also went the most strongly for Trump. People are fully capable of watching their friends and loved ones literally die as a consequence of his actions, rationalizing it, and backing him anyway.

Were I the puppeteer, I would have spent the whole segment with Cookie screaming and clawing at his chest, which is why I am not the puppeteer.

Democratic support among what would become Trump's core constituencies collapsed so rapidly under Obama, his victory in 2012 was taken as a sign the party didn't need them any more, given the rise of a multiracial "coalition of the ascendant."

I don't share her politics of course, but I really don't see why people were being so mean to this 9 year old doing a skit.

This is why @ositanwanevu.com’s book is so important. It helps advance the argument that democracy isn’t so much about the results of an election but about the commitment to ensure the *process* of democratic participation endures. If it’s not about that then it’s possible to vote democracy away.

These systems are going to get people hurt. "Baltimore county high schools last year began using a gun detection system using school cameras and AI to detect potential weapons. If it spots something it believes to be suspicious, it sends an alert to the school and law enforcement officials."

Relatedly, I think we underrate the extent to which Trump is a fully normal politician to young people. There's an abstract awareness that he represents a break from the past, but they don't personally remember it. This year's college freshmen were born in 2006-2007.

Another excellent point from the article

Social choice theorists succeeded in convincing a lot of folks that majority rule by preference aggregation might be impossible, which is one reason why deliberative democrats won out in these circles. Democracy is about talking now. You can even replace voting with randomized discussion groups.

Tidal has basically the same library, pays artists more, has high quality audio, and detailed production credits — you can even search by producers, instrumentalists, and so on if you're into that kind of thing. I've been using it for years. Zero complaints.

Reductively, the two kinds of left candidates in America are 1) Bernie Sanders and 2) young, exciting progressive challenger people like because they saw a video on the Internet. Mixed bag on both ends. Probably worth recruiting more outwardly normal, even boring middle-aged people with left views.

"Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday he will join Italy in sending a military warship to protect an international flotilla seeking to deliver aid to Gaza after it was attacked by drones off Greece." www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Every day, as a leftist on Long Island, I bite my tongue. Around the people who make my children's prescriptions. Around the people who control whether I can continue to live in my apartment. Around my employers. That's where free speech is contested and conservatives like it that way. They're liars

Chotiner: and then you didn't send him to jail, and he ran again? USA: I mean yes but we do have pretty robust institutions, you know, the supreme court and so on Chotiner: I see. So they were able to stop the worst of it? USA: Well now it um the thing you have to understand

Reconstruction bros have long understood that in the American context, "socialism" most often means "integration and equality" bsky.app/profile/bren...

Were there people who were disingenuous about their commitments? Absolutely. Is this true in every movement? Yes. Were some people misguided or overzealous? Yes. Is this true in every movement? Yes. These only become defining when people want to discredit the core argument they’re avoiding.

I have a compromise proposal: the gold card is the only way to immigrate permanently, but we set the price to $4

They're calling it the worst opinion of all time

News is now reporting that two "detainees" were killed. Unclear whether that means people who were actively being transported or whether that means it was people going to the ICE Field Office for a check-in who got shot going into the building.

"More than a million people had canceled Disney streaming subscriptions as of Monday, the Disney source told me, and the company likely knew that trend would only continue the longer they kept Kimmel silenced." @marisakabas.bsky.social w/ a doozy. 👀

It's almost as though America has a very bad political system that must be fundamentally reworked.

Chotiner: You've written a lot about the band Weezer over the years. Me: That's right. Chotiner: And The Blue Album is their best work as you've said. Me: 100%. Always has been. Chotiner: In 1996 in a letter to your high school girlfriend you wrote... Me: Can we go off the record real quick?

Taking the book tour to Chicago this week, folks! Friday, 4 PM, Seminary Co-Op. And stay tuned for another batch of events in the months ahead, including Los Angeles by popular request! www.semcoop.com/event/osita-...

superb and sublime

Honestly think Sunstein does reasonably well until he's asked about Kissinger and delivers an answer you really couldn't make up.

The most skewed frame they could put on what's happened only scratched out a bare 51% majority.

What can you say, really?

Hidden in the D.C. suburbs are thousands of acres of experimental farmland, home to the scientists who helped eradicate screwworm & invented the Roma tomato. USDA's Beltsville lab is the crown jewel of American farm science. Will Trump close it forever? www.thebanner.com/community/cl...

Start with about 40+ percent of the electorate being lost to you no matter what you do. Add in inflation. Then the perception of ineffectuality due to age and the invisibility of many of his domestic successes to non-wonks. Some of the best things were either temporary or set for long-term impact.

It is fully irresponsible to argue for an American return to global leadership. This country is deeply unwell and has no business leading anything until that's no longer the case. There's a whole world out there capable of tending to the world's problems. We must tend to ours.

When a typo in your Google search leads to new and exciting philosophical positions

how is this so perfect , i’m screaming

The Rapture already happened. They haven't put out a record in 14 years. It's time to move on.

Young people are already the most tolerant folks in the country. No one ever proposes making people 50+ do national service or some such because no one believes you can make them do anything, while it's generally accepted that young people exist to be commanded and pay for everyone else's bullshit.

Did Trump win in November because he showed grace and empathy to people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020? Politics is not an Afterschool Special. You put out a strong message about what's wrong, propose a compelling policy agenda, hope the economy cooperates and that's it. None of this mush.

These people are really running low on normal behavior to pathologize

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win (h/t @miriamposner.com) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

there is a point here i want to amplify. the free speech defenders of the mainstream seem to have no awareness that actual free speech is often more fractious and destabilizing than civil and respectful. a society where speech is genuinely free isn’t the deferential space they want it to be.

The reality of the system is that Democrats do need to improve with them and I think this is doable provided people are clued into the reality that most rural Americans work in services, retail, and public administration. Old MacDonald, who has gone for Trump three times in a row, is not gettable.