all I'm saying is that there's a trade-off between legibility and whimsy and we got it wrong here

i don't think there's anything more to this than an ignorant and adolescent need to destroy but to the extent that there is, it's that a closed-off country of poor, low-wage workers is easier to control with imposed hierarchies (see: the american south, 1890 to 1965)

I feel like a lot of Median Voters kind of secretly wanted to be able to elect Trump to play the president on TV while Kamala or some bog-standard dem actually governed

what do politicians do when state capacity might be used by their enemies? they: (1) build "shadow" state capacity in partisan organizations, contractors, consultants (2) push state capacity "down" to where it's easier to control (3) bring capacity "out" of the normal accountability framework

good point to raise re: discussions about "why can't we build" -- the impetus for a lot of the process and review and community engagement that stymies new housing and infrastructure development was borne from the terrible consequences of urban highway construction and slum clearance

am sure this absolutely sucked to deal with but this also looks like the cover for a killer circa-2009 indie rock EP

Trump could shoot a guy on 5th Avenue and NYT would call it “challenging norms.”

The Revolutionaries of 1905

there’s power in a moo-nion

feminist IR undefeated. honestly feminist IR didn't need critical theory for most of it. pure empiricism works well

One of my crank theories for social change in minnesota is that given the place's nominal nordic heritage (swedish-american institute, lutefisk dinners, skol, saunas, etc.), the successes of social democracy in the nordic countries should weigh more heavily as examples for hamm's country

I really credit my time in federal/state public health service for having some awareness about this (lots of veterans in civil service, lots of Black people in civil service, existence of the public health service commissioned corps generally)

I find this so confusing about the biden presidency - I also experienced the benefits of the 'biden boom' (and arguably the twilight of the biden era was the last time I was truly 'happy', however that may be defined), and yet it goes w/o saying that his candidacy was a death knell for dems in '24?

critical support to hank hill and pastor karen stroup of arlen first methodist

man.jpg (sauce www.rand.org/content/dam/...)

I mostly concur, with a caveat, almost akin to "gunsplainers" who use technical details about the workings of firearms to discount pleas for gun control. (ope, in the proper schema does "gun" refer to an artillery piece, while an AR-15 ought to be described as a small arm? Opinion disregarded.)

Really enjoyed watching the MN Vikings with Solomon Hailie, proprietor of Bolé, Ethiopian food, and an immigrant. His Minneapolis spot burned down after the tragic murder of George Floyd in 2020, but the whole community pulled together. Now, things good.

He is trying desperately to stop the reincarnation of The One

there ought to be a new-deal-esque public service fellowship for people to write, edit, and update citations for wikipedia

we have gone from a world in which we were told not to cite wikipedia because it was unreliable to a world where wikipedia might be the only reliable source left on the internet and we all owe a lot to the pedantic nerds who got us there

b/c BVR combat and precision guidance aren't warrior ethos-coded

I would personally switch around the common Party line on Mao to three parts good, seven parts bad -- but within those three parts he likely would not have been a big fan of tiktok or labubus

the cruelty is the point

“Because $50,000 in US paper money was not a ‘thing of value’ at English common law prior to the existence of the US government, we hold . . . .” -SCOTUS, five years from now

萬歲 ! 萬歲 ! 萬萬歲 !

Meanwhile, Will Stancil is still haunting the mountains of Gansu, leaving cold cases of disappeared party leaders. Legend has it he even somehow makes covert trips to ROC for supplies and to coordinate with their intelligence agencies.

I have bridged together dozens of discrete yearns into one uninterrupted megayearn spanning decades. I haven't been acquainted with my brain unaltered since puberty.

thinking abt. how this conundrum appears in the korean film 12.12: the day - to stop a coup d'etat, field commanders must disobey orders either from ineffective or bribed higher ups. however, what motivates counter-coup forces is respect for rule of law, and comply w/ that is to let the coup succeed

Honestly? Same, girl. Enjoy retirement!

there's arguably more credence to describing the trump administration's actions as "north korea-style stuff" in relation to its juche-esque economic ideology than in cancelling jimmy kimmel

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

Anyway shout out to Kirkland Signature, the most trustworthy institution in American life.

mood

We have that already. It's called Episcopalianism

There are so many areas where Canada could go on the offensive and strengthen our economy and society by taking advantage of US self-immolation. This is one. Poaching all of US academia/R&D is another. But they all require an activist, high-capacity state, not an austerity-obsessed government.

Zoomer fashion is terrible.

me_irl

She yelled and yelled at me to bring her special supervisor chair into the kitchen so she could watch me make dinner and then promptly fell asleep.

mass politics means earnestly believing in something which is by definition somewhat normie or basic (re: "mass"), and therefore is cringe

honestly i don't even think it's that. it's the reduction of politics into essentially a subculture or a scene instead of mass politics

PUT A POWER BUTTON ON THE TV

not a fan of the current era of wide-legged pants: - loose bottoms flap around all over the place (not good for bicycling) - think it's a fast-fashion cop-out to mass-produce garments that fit nobody at all in particular more cheaply - we ought to have learned from history (JNCOs, etc.)

Listening to the Lehrer Hubert Humphrey song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF3s...

Worth noting that the highest profile and most successful Democratic elected official currently in those states is Laura Kelly, the Governor of Kansas, who seems to not believe in Ezra Klein’s theory of politics!

Saint Paul: Early voting has started. It’s time for all of us to get out, vote, and make our voices heard so we can continue to move our city forward – together! Let’s go!

yeah man that's literally the entire point: I don't get off on being radical. it is not an emotionally important identity to me. I do not like that many of political beliefs are outside the mainstream. I consider that bad. I would be happy if that changed.

AND THE UPDATES KEEP COMING COMING AND COMING COMING AND COMING COMING... Adding some more states who are independently pushing back on Kennedy.