Unfortunately, in US journalism it is considered neutral to spread a lie, but it is considered "biased" to call out a lie. So, there is a structural asymmetry that rewards colorful lies with virality.

On further thought, it really worth pointing out that the *entire* post WW2 international order as regards trade, economic policy, social policy, the always of war, you name it, was built by the greatest generation and it is this order which is being destroyed as we speak by Trump and Hegseth.

People’s ideas about the world are formed mostly from their social environment. Their social environment includes their parasocial environment: media and social media. The parasocial share of our social environment has been growing for many decades.

A chapter in Hegseth’s book is literally titled “More Lethality, Less Lawyers.” It’s almost as if there were signs!

look, I’ve been operating on the assumption that we cannot reach Bush 2 numbers because the media environment makes the floor much higher than it was back then (and Fox won’t throw him overboard the same way) but, uh, we aren’t through year one and…

Many of us weren't well supervised in the 80s. Our parents gave us house keys, dropped us at school, and hoped for the best.

Fundamentally, the Trump/Miller definition of citizenship requires not just mass deportation of immigrants but mass de naturalization of those judged as "un-American" (Black, Latino, Asian) followed by their subsequent deportation. And we already know they want to redefine birthright citizenship.

I think more than anything else AI feels like a miracle to people with questionable literacy because it can read and write for you, and a lot of us who are highly literate underestimate how many of our society's leaders, esp in business, struggle with literacy.

Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷

oh this is absolutely what i think. i think they feed him fake polls and outright AI slop

This is an insightful but deeply upsetting article about why everyone in the US feels poor, and why the current political situation emerges as a direct result. www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...

Kids don't always want to be on screens, they just need spaces and places to live, grow and play independently.

I love pretty much all pie and don't understand why we have to make all these bad bitches fight each other. My personal fav is strawberry rhubarb, but if you don't like a certain kind of pie, I think it's likely you have only had poor examples of that pie.

Sometimes I think it’s going to be the librarians who will save us all.

I think the fact that we're basically looking at Bush 08 bubbling up before year one is even wrapped is what makes this period fundamentally different to the cycle we've seen with Bush and Trump I

The thing about laws is that they are nothing more & nothing less than agreements we decide to abide by. As Locke observed people in general will stick by laws even under fairly bad circumstances. But past a certain point, if the law is perceived as being broken beyond repair, we can just change it.

The problem with this article is they asked too many lawyers and not enough historians. As a historian, I'd say the legality of Trump's immunity and pardons depends on how he leaves office. At 40 over 55 approval? He's immune. At 25 over 65? He's probably not immune & self-pardons aren't legal.

So we are currently at multiple threatened military operations, attorneys being rejected for improper appointments, suburbanites chasing the armed agents of the state cursing their names, a two vote margin in the house, and consumer sentiment worse than 2008/2009. It’s been less than a year.

One of my favorite things is getting to tell friends who are new to NYC that the subway "stand clear of the closing doors please" voice is a trans woman named Bernie Wagenblast and she's amazing.

I am being personally attacked.

help

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features." There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

very important for the government of the USA to explain the difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia while visa and Mastercard must defend Western morality by blocking anyone from buying games with illustrated school uniforms in them

I mean, Trump's policies have taken an economy that was the envy of the world & had record job numbers at low inflation and in less than a year we're now at "limping along, with lots of warning signs" Supposing that it stays stable at the current "limping along" is the *less* sensible position, imo.

this thread is unbelievable

I think the key things here are that it wasn't a secret, and that the tolerated norm of powerful men trading access to 18-24 year old women very easily slid into them trading access to children.

but that last part did happen. imo it is particularly important to emphasize that the oil majors + big three did, in fact, directly reshape much of public transit in major cities and this included the literal dismemberment of public transit systems. was it the only thing? no did it happen? yes

Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.

one thing i think is true is that republicans assumed that democrats would not respond in kind and that the forceful pushback spooked them (a lesson to learn here, perhaps)

I've had a few 'what do you do' convs recently, and everyone on hearing I'm an author comes out with "so how do you come up with ideas?", just like every book or movie about a writer has them staring numbly into space because they don't have an idea for the next book. And look, that is Not It.

If the president can just raise taxes and spend money without Congressional approval, the constitution is null and void.

it’s amazing how these idiot men can’t seem to figure out that if a woman 20+ years younger than you wants to fuck you, there is almost certainly something *extremely* weird about her

me: good night. sweet dreams. love you. goofball: i have a question. me: ok. make it quick. goofball: what does “overthrowing the status quo” mean?

Would love to see someone from the moderate, Majority Dem faction really address and wrestle with the political effects of what Labour has been up to.

You know how in the old road runner cartoons the Coyote would run over a cliff, keep running, then look down, everything would pause for a second, then he would fall? We are at roughly pause for a second o clock right now.

If I had to guess, I would estimate we are roughly... here:

i think that a lot of people (of all ideological varieties) conflate "face genuine economic pressures personally", "face structural trends that favor certain forms of conservatism", and "have personal issues that funnel them into extreme politics" into a single issue and that's unhelpful

In 2010, Keith Olbermann smeared the Assange rape accusers, went on a week-long tear of blocking everyone and quitting Twitter when criticized, then accused me of "glorifying smoking" because I had a cigarette in my PFP, but it would have made more sense if I'd known he was living with a teenager.

A critic (readers generally, but I'm thinking here of people who set out to analyze or otherwise discuss a work) can only see through the lens of their own context. That lens makes everything look like it fits (or doesn't) whatever pattern the critic is most familiar with.

I know way, way too much about Olivia Nuzzi's sex life and I have learned all of it against my will.

to have an affair with one longshot presidential candidate twice your age that you’re profiling may be regarded as a misfortune; to have two looks like carelessness

as someone who really thought there wasn’t much there for the longest time I cannot draw any conclusion other than “they are monumentally terrible” at this point

(alt text for previous repost) "Re: 'There are a lot of people on your side who will be in the Epstein Files too!': No there aren't, my side is the 'People Who Don't Fuck Children' side, anyone not on this side can get all the way into the bin, what side are YOU on, exactly?" — John Scalzi

It would sure be nice if more of our species could evolve beyond “needing to literally have a bad thing happen to them personally before they’re capable of even *starting* to grasp that it’s also bad when it happens to other people”

I think the key thing this shows is that people in general do not like government shutdowns and so they generically approve of a deal which ends the shutdown, the details of which they do not generally know or care about, as much as those of us On Here hash them out.

This seems to be a common misconception. *There is nowhere to go* for most faculty & staff. The academic labor market is incredibly inflexible even in good times, we haven't been in good times for decades, and we're now in a *contracting* phase, not expanding. For most people, there's nowhere to go.

The present socioeconomic order of the US is a result of slavery, Jim Crow & policies arising from the two. All present political conflicts can be explained as attempts to create an actual democracy vs ppl who were winners of these policies reacting against losing some of the resulting advantages.

you could fact check this — there aren’t 30 million illegal immigrants and there is no evidence that the presence of an immigrant in say houston has any impact on housing in madison, wisconsin — or you could note straightforwardly that this is just nazi rhetoric

Going to say this again: Getting into arguments about what is "actually" pedophilia in a "technical" sense makes it sound like you are trying to excuse the rape of underage teenagers by grown ass adults. Just..stop.